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Highlights • The NMC's rich natural assets are faced with rapidly evolving pressures. • We identify and value six key coastal and marine ecosystem services in the NMC. • Ecosystem service value flows are mapped at national and provincial level. • We investigate values in the broader context of 32 policy-relevant indicators. • Values and indicators are combined in a multi-criteria analysis for policy guidance. Abstract The Northern Mozambique Channel hosts one of the world's most outstanding terrestrial and marine biodiversity-rich areas. So far, the region has been only moderately impacted by human activities but rapidly evolving socio-economic pressures call for sustainable management of the region's ecosystem service flows, which play a key role in supporting coastal livelihoods. In this paper, economic valuation and geospatial analysis are first combined to provide estimates of the economic values of key coastal and marine ecosystem services in the region, which are then aggregated at the administrative level. This enables an assessment of not just absolute country performance with respect to the provision of the ecosystem service in question but relative performance compared to its peers. The investigated services are coastal tourism, coastal recreation, fishing, mariculture, carbon sequestration and coastal protection. Second, we use the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response framework and multi-criteria analysis to investigate the elicited economic values in the context of policy-relevant indicators of biodiversity, poverty, institutional responses, pressures and drivers of environmental change. The results demonstrate great diversity among provinces and countries in the region. Finally, the study's contribution to guide decision makers towards a sustainable growth path in the region is discussed, including the prioritization of areas for conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social media represent an extensive, opportunistic source of behavioral data and revealed preferences for ecosystem services (ES) analysis. Such data may allow to advance the approach, scale and timespan to which ES are assessed, mapping and valued. This is especially relevant in the context of developing regions whose decision support tools are often limited by a lack of resources and funding. This research presents an economic valuation tool for recreational ES, suitable at wide spatial scales, relying on crowdsourced metadata from social media with a proof of concept tested on an Indian tropical Ramsar wetland. We demonstrate how geotagged photographs from Flickr can be used in the context of a developing country to (i) map nature-based recreation patterns, (ii) value recreational ecosystem services, and (iii) investigate how recreational benefits are affected by changes in ecosystem quality. The case-study application is the Vembanad Lake in Kerala, India, and the adjacent backwaters. Geographic Information Systems are implemented to extract 4328 Flickr photographs that are used to map hot spots of recreation and infer the home location of wetland visitors from within Kerala state with good accuracy. An individual, single-site travel cost demand function is generated and estimated using both Poisson and Negative Binomial regressions, which results in mean consumer surplus estimates between Rs. 2227–3953 ($34–$62) per visit and annual domestic recreation benefits of Rs. 7.53–13.37 billion ($115.5–$205 million) in the investigated wetlands. Improvement in water quality to a level that supports wildlife and fisheries is projected to result in a Rs. 260 million ($4 million) annual increase in recreational benefits, while restoring previously encroached lake area would result in almost Rs. 50 million ($760,000) in yearly value increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural water treatment systems have long been recognized as sources of ancillary benefits in the form of cultural ecosystem services. To date, there is a lack of quantitative understanding of the extent and welfare impact of such benefits. This paper investigates 166 natural treatment systems worldwide and provides the first quantitative assessment of their recreational and educational benefits. The public use is highly influenced by the type of recreational activities, presence of recreational and educational facilities, and accessibility of the systems. Using value transfer techniques, we estimate the mean and median monetary values of recreational benefits in 8397 and 530 €/ha/year, respectively. We compare such value flows with operation and management costs and other ecosystem services provided by these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ocean acidification appears as another environmental pressure associated with anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. This paper aims to assess the likely magnitude of this phenomenon in the Mediterranean region. This involves translating expected changes in ocean chemistry into impacts, first on marine and coastal ecosystems and then, through effects on services provided by these to humans, into socio-economic costs. Economic market and non-market valuation techniques are needed for this purpose. Important sectors affected are tourism and recreation, red coral extraction, and fisheries (both capture and aquaculture production). In addition, the costs associated with the disruption of ecosystem regulating services, notably carbon sequestration and non-use values will be considered. Finally, indirect impacts on other economic sectors will have to be estimated. The paper discusses the framework and methods to accomplish all of this, and offers a preliminary, qualitative overall assessment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]