海洋生态价值核算与应用初探

开展海洋生态系统价值核算研究对于构建基于生态系统的海洋经济管理具有重要的理论意义和现实需求。以海洋生态价值核算为研究切入点，以完善海洋经济核算体系为目标，梳理出海洋生态系统核算的流程及内容。在研究路径上，首先分别从生态系统流量和存量核算两个层面设计海洋生态服务和海洋生态资产价值核算框架，然后探索出基于供给使用表和资产负债表为手段的海洋生态系统与经济及人类活动的融合衔接，最终从生态服务权衡、价格估算、贴现率确定及整合列报四个方面提出下一步研究难点及探索方向。     

基于灰色局势决策模型的海水养殖空间布局优化决策

通过综合考察收入、成本、环境依赖度、生态损害四个决策因子,建立综合测度矩阵,构建海水养殖空间布局优化的灰色局势决策模型。选取相关数据对山东省、广东省、浙江省、辽宁省的海水养殖空间布局进行矩阵测度,实现我国海水养殖空间布局的优化决策。得出优化决策方案如下：广东省养殖海参、海带占优,海水养殖的优化次序为海参、贝类、海带、鱼类;辽宁省养殖贝类、海参占优,海水养殖的优化次序为海参、贝类、鱼类、海带;浙江省养殖海参占优,海水养殖的优化次序为鱼类、海参、贝类、海带;山东省养殖鱼类、海参占优,海水养殖的优化次序为海参、鱼类、贝类、海带。     

Sustainability,Social Discount Rates and the Selection of Project Procurement Method

The notion of sustainability has lead to the evaluation of public projects in terms of wider socio-economic and environmental benefits. The Cost Benefit Analysis and its respective, Social Discount Rate (SDR), is of crucial importance, especially when the advantages of private financing are to be demonstrated in comparison with the alternative traditional procurement of works and services. The SDR seen as a measure of a country’s value of future costs and benefits is related to the notion of promoted sustainability. The impact of smaller and declining SDRs on project selection is investigated, and a conceptual formulation concerning the selection of the project procurement method is presented. The modelled formulation will assist central and local governments in assessing projects and the potential benefit of private financing.     

辽东湾、渤海湾、莱州湾三湾生态系统服务价值评估

海洋生态系统服务价值对海洋资源开发和海洋综合管理具有重要的意义。研究应用联合国千年生态系统评估框架,构建了食品生产、原料生产、基因资源、氧气生产和气候调节、废弃物处理、生物控制、休闲娱乐、科研文化、初级生产以及物种多样性维持等10项服务价值的评估方法。对辽东湾、渤海湾和莱州湾进行了上述10项生态系统服务价值的评估,结果表明,三个海湾服务功能的总价值量为1 485.11×108元,单位面积价值为4.52元/(m2 a)。其中,辽东湾价值量最大,占三个海湾总价值量的56.7%,其次是莱州湾,占总价值量的23.3%,渤海湾最小,占总价值量的20%。各项服务中,食品生产的价值量最大,占总价值量的71.0%。食品生产、氧气生产和气候调节、初级生产这三项服务价值之间表现出显著相关性,主要是由于三项服务有着共同的初级生产者。研究结果可为相关管理部门制定生态补偿政策提供理论依据。     

The depletion of coastal environmental resources by human activities and its monetary evaluation

The marine environment provides rich and varied resources and services or functions for human＇s production and life. Many countries have competitively exploited and utilized sea and ocean to develop marine economy for some years. The over-exploitation of marine environment and the overuse of marine resources have led to resource degradation,environmental pollution and ecosystem destruction. Considering the depletion of coastal environmental resources dur-ing planning, governing and decision-making is an important measure to promote the harmonious and sustainabledevelopment of coastal environmental resources and social economy, the main precondition of which is that the depletionof coastal environmental resources by human activities has been monetarily evaluated. Firstly, this paper summarizesrelevant references in this field and analyzes different sorts of depletion of coastal environmental resources caused byhuman activities and the necessity and importance of the monetary evaluation. Finally, this paper extensively discussesthe corresponding evaluation models of the depletion of marine mineral resources, marine organism resources, mari-time transport resources, intertidal zones and shallow seas, and marine environmental functions and services includingenvironmental capacity, gas regulation, disturbance prevention, recreation and biodiversity.     

Valuing Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Agriculture: The Impact of Climate Change on Food Production in the United Kingdom

This paper provides an estimate of the contribution of the ecosystem to the provisioning services generated by agriculture. This is achieved by valuing the changes in productivity generated by a marginal alteration in ecosystem inputs. As an example, we consider the variation in rainfall and temperature projected by the recent UK Climate Impacts Programme. The analysis implements a spatially explicit, econometric model of agricultural land use based on the methodology recently developed by Fezzi and Bateman (Am J Agric Econ 93:1168–1188, 2011). Land use area and livestock stocking rates are then employed to calculate farm gross margin estimates of the value of changes in provisioning ecosystem services. Findings suggest that the variation in ecosystem inputs induced by climate change will have substantial influence on agricultural productivity. Interestingly, within the UK context climate change generates mainly positive effects, although losses are forecasted for those southern areas most vulnerable to heat-stress and drought.     

Public enterprises,planning and policy adoption: three welfare propositions

Despite widespread privatizations over the last three decades, public enterprises, as production units under government control, are still present in several countries and sectors. While the academic and political debate on the costs and benefits of privatization is vast, a focus on the rationale for public enterprises, from the standpoint of Social Cost Benefit Analysis, is missing. This paper aims at filling this gap and provides a normative discussion on public enterprises in a general equilibrium setting. The conditions under which public provision may be beneficial and the metrics for evaluating polices and projects under (a)symmetric information and (non)benevolent governments are presented in three welfare propositions. The main policy message points to the overall quality of institutions as a necessary pre-condition for socially desirable public enterprises. A sound institutional environment provides policy-makers with the correct incentives to design and implement meaningful policies even if public administrators adopt sub-optimal plans. Institutions should constrain self-interested policy-makers from disrupting the key welfare signals for policy adoption as well as for project appraisal, while bias in management is a relatively less important concern.     

Trade and the governance of ecosystem services

We work with a basic general equilibrium model of an economy with an industrial good and a rural good. Industrial good production results in pollution that affects the provision of ecosystem services and thereby the production of the rural good. The assignment of ecosystem rights to the industrial polluters or to the rural pollutees results in differential transaction costs that affect production possibilities between the two goods. Ecosystem rights are assigned to maximize social welfare. Over time, technological change and differences in income superiority affect the choice of the assignment of rights. Opening to trade affects the choice of the assignment of ecosystem rights depending on the nature of technological change, but the relative income superiority of goods no longer affects the assignment of ecosystem rights in a small economy. Thus, among other findings, we demonstrate that the phenomena known as the environmental Kuznets curve does not hold for the protection of ecosystem services in production, or production externalities generally, because trade separates consumption from production.     

Ecosystem services, agriculture, and rural poverty in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon: Interrelationships and policy prescriptions

Policymakers seeking to modify financial incentives to increase the flows of ecosystem services in and around tropical moist forests must consider where to focus their attention and what collection of incentives can effectively achieve policy objectives. In most cases, policymakers focus on extensively forested areas where the flows of ecosystem services between agriculture and the environment is generally characterized by massive flows of carbon and soil nutrients from forests to agriculture. In these forest margin areas the stock of primary forest is eventually exhausted and the cheap ingredients provided by nature to agriculture become increasingly scarce. At this point, policy interest generally wanes, and agriculture and the environment begin slow declines in ecosystem service exchange, often with negative consequences for rural poverty. How does one promote increased flows of ecosystem services from agricultural lands without increasing poverty when forests and soils have been depleted? Can the standard instruments, e.g., payments for ecosystem services, be effective in such situations, and if so, do the costs to society of securing these services increase? Here we focus on the flows of ecosystem services at the end of the cycle of converting primary forest to agriculture. Primary data from the Bragantina area in the southeastern Brazilian Amazon, an area cleared of primary forest decades ago, are used to characterize smallholder production systems, to describe the flows of ecosystem services into and from these systems, and to develop a bioeconomic model of smallholder agriculture capable of predicting the effects of several types of policy action on ecosystem services provided by and to agriculture, and on-farm household incomes and food self-reliance. Of particular interest is the Proambiente Pilot Program in Brazil, which uses smallholder payment schemes to induce farmers to manage land and forest resources in ways that generate more ecosystem services. Baseline results suggest that smallholder agriculture leads to a gradual loss of ecosystem services (mainly above-ground and root carbon) provided by secondary forest fallows, and that reduction in fallow age leads to reductions in plant diversity. Intensifying agricultural activities accelerates this process, but considerably increases smallholder incomes. Paying farmers for ecosystem services linked to the retention of secondary forests and the Proambiente program both increase area in forest fallow, but the latter substantially reduces farm income because of input use restrictions. In general, programs aiming to promote the production of ecosystem services should not limit farmers' choices of ways to provide them. Employment and food self-reliance issues associated with policy options for increasing on-farm stocks of carbon and plant biodiversity are also explored.     

围填海导致的生态系统服务损失的回顾性评价——以厦门湾为例

海岸带是人类活动最集中的地带。随着沿海经济的发展、人口的增长,各种人类活动尤其是围填海,对近海生态系统的干扰愈来愈大,使之承受日益增大的压力。文章以厦门湾为研究区域,基于相应的评估模型,对1980～2005年该区域的围填海工程所导致的生态系统服务价值损失进行回顾性评价。结果表明,1980～2005年厦门湾的围填海工程造成的近海生态系统服务损失超过7.8亿元,其中同安湾损失最大,西海域次之,二者之和占厦门湾总损失的67.8%。此外,文中还对供给、调节、文化和支持这四类服务损失的比例作了分析。     

Valuing nature: From environmental impacts to natural capital

Economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice. Economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services. In general terms, these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of Environmental Impact Assessment or, more generally, Cost Benefit Analysis. There is, however, an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital (natural resource stocks, land and ecosystems) as such. There are two main reasons for this new demand. On the one hand, sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and, therefore, there is a need to value natural capital changes. This valuation process, nevertheless, only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued, either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use. Yet, whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task, this is less true in the case of the second, while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one. Even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical, these tasks are of a different order of magnitude, as the experience of both the World Bank and the Statistics Division of the United Nations in this respect clearly shows.     

Book Notes

Book reviewed in this article:
Bojö J., Maler, K-G. and Unemo. L. Environment andDevelopmenr An Economic Approach
Luken, R. Efficiency in Environmental Regulorion: A Benefit Cost Analysis of Alternative Approaches.
Siebert, H. (ed.) Environmental Scarcify: The International Dimensionn
Kraus, Willy. Private Businesr in China. Revival between ideology and Pragmarirm.
Pejovich S. The Economics of Property Rights: Towardso Theory of Comparative Systems     

Integrating the valuation of ecosystem services into the Input-Output economics of an Alpine region

Traditional economic accounting mostly ignores the benefits provided by nature, and thus falls short in giving incentives for improving the way the economy uses natural resources. In this study, we develop a general framework for integrating the value of ecosystem services into an Input-Output Table. In particular, we integrate regionally valued ecosystem services on the supply side of an Input-Output Table to quantify what natural resources offer to economic development. Using several different indicators, we show the benefits of the ecosystem services under the status quo and a scenario for regional development. Our results suggest that economic activities should be encouraged to use the ecosystem services more intensively, while landscape development should aim at providing the required services. We conclude that such an approach can provide a platform for decision-makers to learn quantitatively about the dependency of the regional economy on natural services.     

Efficient ecosystem services and naturalness in an ecological/economic model

In an integrated economic/ecological model, the economy benefits from ecosystem services that include: (1) the consumptive use of a harvested species, (2) the non-consumptive use of popular species, and (3) naturalness, i.e., the divergence of the ecosystem’s biodiversity from its natural steady state. The biological component of the model, which is applied to a nine-species Alaskan marine ecosystem, relies on individual optimizing behaviour by plants and animals to establish population dynamics. The biological component is used to define naturalness. By varying harvesting we arrive at different steady-state populations and humans choose from among these steady states. Welfare maximizing levels of the ecosystem services are derived, then it is shown that in the laissez-faire economy overharvesting occurs when the harvesting industry ignores ecosystem services (2) and (3). Lastly, we introduce efficiency restoring taxes and standards that internalize the ecosystem externalities.

Ecosystem services and regional development: An application to Sweden

This study carries out interregional comparisons of development and sustainable use of natural capital with and without inclusion of non-marketed ecosystem services. A simple dynamic model of an open economy shows that appropriate adjustment of conventional income accounts includes flow and stock components, but excludes explicit entrance of pollution. Calculations are made for Swedish regions and for two types of ecosystem services — pollution sequestration and recreational services — provided by three types of ecosystems: forests, agricultural landscape and wetlands. When comparing the adjusted and non-adjusted regional income accounts it is shown that the two measurements generate significantly different pictures of regional income and growth; regions that are traditionally considered as relatively less growth promoting are shown to hold important sources of wealth from natural capital, while counties that are rich in conventional accounts fall behind when adjusting for values of changes in natural capital.     

The Implications for Health,Depression, and Life Satisfaction from a Permanent Increase in Income for the Disadvantaged Elderly: Evidence from Taiwan

This paper uses an exogenous increase in income for a specific subgroup to explore the extent to which higher income leads to higher levels of health and well-being. In 1995, the Taiwanese government implemented the Senior Farmer Welfare Benefit Interim Regulation (SFWBIR) that was a pure cash injection to senior farmers. A difference-in-differences (DiD) approach is used on survey data from the Taiwanese Health and Living Status of Elderly in 1989 and 1996 to evaluate the short-term effect of the SFWBIR on self-assessed health, depression, and life satisfaction (LS). Senior manufacturing workers are employed as a comparison group for senior farmers in the natural experiment. This paper provides evidence that the increase in income caused by this pension reform significantly improved the mental health of senior farmers by reducing 1.697 points of the depression scale in DiD and 2.178 points in the robust estimation; however, it had no significant short-term impact on self-assessed health or LS.     

海洋生态系统服务功能及其价值评估研究

本文在系统分析生态系统服务功能及价值评估的研究进展基础上．探讨了海洋生态系统服务功能的内涵。根据我国海洋生态系统的特征．初步构建了海洋生态系统服务功能分类体系．研究了海洋生态系统典型服务功能的价值评价方法。最后，结合国内外研究现状．进行了海洋生态系统服务功能及价值评估研究的展望分析．提出了研究中应注意的若干问题。     

Ecosystem and Economy: An Integrated Dynamic General Equilibrium Approach

A dynamic general equilibrium model is developed for analyzing economy-ecosystem interactions. It includes stock-flow relations of natural resources, species populations and pollution, and it provides a microfoundation of the growth of populations. Humans and (other) species compete for natural resources and (prey) biomass. Resource stocks, pollution and populations determine public ecosystem services which in turn affect all agents in both the ecosystem and the economy. We establish a benchmark market system encompassing Lindahl markets for ecosystem services and emission markets. We also analyze a system where those two types of markets break down (laissez-faire) and propose efficiency restoring policies.     

我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究特征及态势

海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估,将生态系统服务无法由市场直接体现的效用价值量化为货币价值,是实现生态资源可持续发展的重要手段,同时也为资源合理利用和补偿、环境价值核算等提供了必要的决策依据。本文基于我国现有研究,分别从生态系统类型、时空分布、评估类别、评估技术以及信度和效度检验五个方面,系统地分析了我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究现状,识别出当前的研究特征。研究结果显示近年来我国海洋生态系统服务非市场价值评估研究增长迅速,尤其以上海、山东、辽宁等沿海区域为主要研究对象;湿地和海湾海滨生态系统的研究最为密集,其中对使用价值的研究远远超过非使用价值;条件价值法和旅行成本法是主要研究方法,两种方法都以游憩价值评估为主;评估结果的信度与效度检验是当前研究的薄弱环节,也是未来研究的重点发展方向。     

Ecosystem services: Foundations for a new rural–urban compact

The traditional rural–urban compact, now almost ten thousand years old, whereby the countryside sent products and people to the city in exchange for the city's products, services and governance is not working anymore. The rural population is increasingly marginalized and natural environments are increasingly destroyed. A new rural–urban compact needs to arise where cities acknowledge and pay for environmental sustainability. In this new rural–urban compact there would be more employment opportunities and more income coming to the rural areas, and the cities would benefit from a sustainable supply of rural products and ecosystem services provided by restored rural environments. This paper describes why this is important and provides several ideas on how to implement programs.