Economic valuation of ecosystem services – EcoValue

Following the adoption of the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 by the EU the theme of ecosystem services begun to contaminate the full area of the EU policies. Monitoring, defending, and investing in ecosystem services is now presented as a strategic component of the plans devoted to promote the socioeconomic development in Europe, and both the Rural Development Policy and the Cohesion Policy are already partly dedicated to this topic. Hence, estimating the economic costs related to the depletion of ecosystem services is a frontier theme in ecological economics: the loss of natural resources, and in particular land, leads to significant costs that markets fail to consider and that determine important externalities. Valuing ecosystems services is therefore becoming of fundamental importance for ensuring correct market functioning and preventing environmental deterioration caused by human activity.

The objective of EcoValue is to highlight the importance of a correct assessment of the economic value of ecosystem services through empirical and quantitative analyses aimed at producing evidence-based policy guidelines for sustainable and resilient cities.

The research conducted in EcoValue sides traditional market-based evaluation of ecosystem services to more innovative, non market-based, evaluation methods and covers a multiplicity of geographical and cultural contexts stemming from European urban and rural areas in both developed and developing countries to countries involved in cross-border cooperation, especially the Balkan area.