Knowledge of ecosystem services (ES) and the benefits provided by offshore marine areas, including the welfare impacts from the establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) is still limited. In the present study we evaluated benefits from ES, citizens' willingness-to-pay for potential changes in the provision of ES, and welfare losses to citizens due to restrictions on economic activities from establishing new offshore MPAs in Latvian waters. The scenarios for the economic valuation were based on analyzing the supply of ES from the protected marine habitats, showing changes in the ES supply in policy relevant scenarios of the MPA size. Our study evaluates a wide array of ES delivered by offshore protected habitats and reveals that citizens' willingness-to-pay for preserving habitats and ES supply exceeds their welfare losses from restrictions in economic activities. Our approach supports the prioritization of habitat types according to their contribution to ES supply and benefits for citizens. The analysis can be complemented with spatial data regarding the distribution of habitats, providing an opportunity to identify areas with the highest ES benefits to support marine protection and spatial planning.
This article contributes to the accelerating development of methods for sustainability assessment (SA) to support maritime spatial planning (MSP), by proposing an ecosystem services based framework for SA. MSP is generally seen as an important approach to promote a more sustainable use of sea space. However, so far all sustainability concerns are not equally well represented in planning practice; in particular, social sustainability aspects such as social justice and sociocultural values related to human-nature connectedness receive less attention. We first explored concepts and principles related to sustainability assessment and social sustainability in the scientific literature. Based on this, we analyzed how far the present approaches to assessments in Baltic Sea EU Member States have been extended from environmental concerns to towards broader sustainability concerns so far. Using current best practice in two pioneering countries (UK and Sweden), we illustrated how social sustainability principles could match with applied social impact criteria, and further, how such criteria can inform an ecosystem services-based impact assessment framework. Based on existing frameworks, including the DPSIR (driving forces, pressures, state, impact, response) environmental assessment framework and the ecosystem service cascade, we propose a sustainability impact assessment framework for MSP (MSP-SA) integrating across sustainability dimensions and including assessment of distributional aspects of marine ecosystem service benefits. Finally, we discuss the applicability and further development of the framework in relation to present day sustainability assessment practice in MSP.
A new proposed framework to assess sustainability impacts of maritime spatial plans (MSP-SA) utilizes the ecosystem service (ES) concept to address the often-lacking social sustainability of the plans. This study departs from the MSP-SA framework and applies it to the (emerging) sea use of mussel farming. Informed by a literature review and two surveys, it is investigated whether the benefits and impacts of mussel farming can be related to underlying ES and relevant planning questions. The results show that most benefits and impacts of mussel farming can be connected to ES and reveal different user-environment-beneficiary interactions, ranging from conflicts to synergies. The marine planning framework is structured into different planning phases and it is shown that the ES concept can contribute to a normative vision, strategic objectives, and site-specific operational questions. Studying the different user-environment-beneficiary interactions can reveal who benefits and who loses from planning decisions. While the marine planning framework developed in this study is targeted at mussel farming, the approach can be adapted to other uses and planning areas and can contribute to social and equity aspects in MSP by considering the receivers of (dis)benefits.
There is growing evidence that the ecosystem service (ES) concept can provide valuable input to marine spatial planning (MSP), by highlighting which ecosystem goods and services can be produced from a planning area. ES link the underlying ecosystem processes and functions to the benefits humans can receive from ecosystems (the ecosystem cascade). In this study, we argue that the ecosystem cascade can be used to structure the stock-taking and future scenario analysis in MSP. However, indicators, which are needed for measuring ES, have often been applied in various ways to the different steps of the cascade. Here, we apply a consistent approach to sorting indicators into the cascade. The indicators are presented in an indicator pool that can be used to filter them based on the cascade steps, several quality criteria, and themes. The pool consists of 772 indicators, of which 735 were analyzed. In total, 252 analyzed indicators belong to the provisioning services, 314 indicators to the regulating services and 169 to the cultural services. The indicator pool offers a suitable starting point to select indicators for ES assessments within MSP. Using indicators at the different cascade steps allows the assessment of i) the ecosystem components generating the services and ii) the impacts on ES and their beneficiaries when changes occur in the provision of the services due to planning or management decisions.
Although the concept of ecosystem services has been in use for many decades, its application for policy support is limited, particularly with respect to marine ecosystems. Gaps in the assessments of ecosystem services supply prevent its empirical application. We advance these assessments by providing an assessment tool, which links marine ecosystem components, functions and services, and graphically represents the assessment process and its results. The tool consists of two parts: (i) a matrix following the ecosystem services cascade structure for quantifying the contribution of ecosystem components in the provision of ecosystem services; (ii) and a linkage diagram for visualizing the interactions between the elements. With the aid of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), the tool was used to assess the relative contribution of a wide range of marine ecosystem components in the supply of ecosystem services in the Latvian marine waters. Results indicate that the tool can be used to assess the impacts of environmental degradation in terms of ecosystem service supply. These impacts could further be valued in socioeconomic terms, as changes in the socioeconomic values derived from the use of ecosystem services. The tool provides an opportunity for conducting a holistic assessment of the ecosystem service supply and communicating the results to marine spatial planning practitioners, and increasing their understanding and use of the ecosystem service concept.
The current and potential use of the seas and oceans is often called the 'Blue Economy'. Recently, the European Commission launched its Blue Growth Strategy on the opportunities for marine and maritime sustainable growth. The European Commission considers that Blue Growth is a long-term strategy in the marine and maritime sectors with great potential for innovation and economic growth. Holistic spatial planning systems supporting sustainable development have proven themselves in terrestrial planning and are also needed at sea. Due to this reason,
the BONUS BASMATI project is based on the ecosystem services approach to assist in assessing sustainable solutions corresponding to policy goals.