Valuing Marine Biodiversity for use in Decision Making

愿景：确定海洋生物多样性的新的和政策相关的多元价值，并将这些价值应用于共同开发绿色投资方案，从而使我们对生物多样性经济学的理解和利用发生变革性转变。在理解经济如何嵌入自然以及如何将生物多样性纳入经济模式和决策方面取得了重大进展。这包括环境估值、生态系统服务评估、自然资本方法和绿色投资的增长。尽管取得了这些进展，但生物多样性只是偶尔被纳入决策，仍然处于我们经济体系的外部。其结果是生物多样性持续丧失，对我们的社会、经济和基本福祉产生负面影响。主要挑战包括：对生物多样性如何提供效益的初步理解导致缺乏决策级数据; ii.用户由于信心不足、理解不足和对受益者的定义微不足道而对应用价值犹豫不决; iii.绿色投资路线的不确定性。为了应对这些相互关联的挑战，ValMaB-DM汇集了海洋生态学，人文地理学，环境和生态经济学，治理和金融方面的专业知识。该团队包括学者、咨询公司和非政府组织，以及政府、工业和商业代表组成的广泛合作伙伴网络。为了推动对生物多样性经济学的理解和利用的有意义的转变，我们的合作伙伴强调需要最先进的理论发展与切实可行的陈述相结合。因此，ValMaB-DM采用双轨方法。一个轨道将开发创新的，国际上适用的方法，而一个平行的轨道将在确定为在索伦特和马里湾净生物多样性增益的优先事项的主要沿海栖息地进行研究，展示潜在的生态，社会，经济和财务效益。为了解决一个关键的证据缺口，并为净零议程提供信息，我们将重点关注监管服务：废物的生物修复和碳封存。为了应对上述挑战，ValMaB-DM将首先通过结合新的和现有的数据来评估生物多样性状况如何影响服务的数量，质量和恢复力，从而证实海洋生物多样性与碳封存和生物修复之间的相互联系。我们将与国际专家合作，就将这些发现从地方扩展到国家和通用达成共识。在现有认识的基础上，将进一步发展和应用碳固存和生物修复的稳健、普遍适用的货币估值，以支持自然资本核算框架，并在案例研究中结合新的生态认识。由于单一的货币估值可能与社区愿望不一致，将推进和部署参与性绘图，以使真实的世界社区参与绘制与生物多样性和自然资本资源相关的社会价值和权衡。生物多样性的生态、货币和社会价值将通过共同设计和实施绿色投资与决策相联系，以维护和改善沿海生境。沟通和能力建设是ValMaB-DM的核心。将通过共同开展研究、利益攸关方摸底、方案指导小组和分享成果（例如政策简报、贸易展览、社交媒体）来安排战略性利益攸关方参与。我们还将为从业人员，合作者和外部利益相关者提供培训计划，由自然资源威尔士和沿海伙伴关系网络启用，并开发硕士课程模块，并利用与SuMMeR博士培训中心的链接。

Vision: To determine novel and policy relevant pluralistic values for marine biodiversity and apply these values to co-develop green investment options, leading to a transformative shift in our understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity. There have been significant developments in understanding how economies are embedded in nature and how biodiversity can be integrated into economic models and decision making. This has included growth in environmental valuation, ecosystem service assessments, natural capital approaches, and green investments. Despite these advances biodiversity is only sporadically integrated into decision making and remains external to our economic systems. The result is continuing biodiversity loss with negative implications for our society, economy, and fundamental wellbeing. Key challenges include: i. a nascent understanding of how biodiversity provides benefits resulting in a lack of decision grade data; ii. hesitance of users to apply values due to low confidence, poor understanding, and a negligible definition of the beneficiaries; iii. uncertainty regarding routes of green investment. To address these interconnected challenges ValMaB-DM brings together expertise in marine ecology, human geography, environmental and ecological economics, governance, and finance. The team includes academics, consultancies, and NGOs coupled with an extensive partner network of government, industry and commerce representatives.To drive a meaningful shift in the understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity our partners highlighted a need for state-of-the-art theoretical development to be coupled with practicable representations. As such ValMaB-DM takes a twin track approach. One track will develop innovative, internationally applicable approaches whilst a parallel track will ground the research in key coastal habitats identified as priorities for net-biodiversity gain at the Solent and the Moray Firth, showcasing potential ecological, social, economic, and financial benefits. To address a critical evidence gap and inform the net zero agenda we will focus on the regulating services: bioremediation of waste and carbon sequestration. To tackle the stated challenges ValMaB-DM will first substantiate the interlinkages between marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration and bioremediation through the combination of new and existing data to assess how the condition of biodiversity affects the quantity, quality, and resilience of the services. Collaborating with international expertise we will develop consensus on scaling these findings from local to national and generic. Building on current understanding robust, generically applicable, monetary valuations of carbon sequestration and bioremediation will be further developed and applied to support natural capital accounting frameworks, and also coupled with novel ecological understanding at the case studies. As singular monetary valuations may not align with community aspirations participatory mapping will be advanced and deployed to engage real world communities in mapping the social values and trade-offs associated with biodiversity and Natural Capital resources. The ecological, monetary, and social values of biodiversity will be connected to decision-making through the co-design and implementation of green investment to maintain and enhance coastal habitats. Communication and capacity building are at the heart of ValMaB-DM. Strategic stakeholder engagement will be choreographed through the co-development of research, stakeholder mapping, the Programme Steering Group, and sharing of outcomes (e.g. policy briefs, trade shows, social media). We will also run a training programme for practitioners, collaborators and external stakeholders, enabled by Natural Resources Wales and the Coastal Partnership Network, and develop of an MSc course module and capitalise on links to the SuMMeR Center for Doctoral Training.