The services provided by marine ecosystems: Economic assessments and their usages

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) is distinguished into the following four categories of ecosystem services: provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services, and supporting services. Different international organizations therefore promote the use of economic evaluations of ecosystem services. A multi-criteria approach to the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services seems from this point best adapted to provide a broad range of indicators for ecosystem services based on ecological, economic or social information, which makes sense to a wide variety of actors. A recent study on the use of the monetary evaluation of ecosystem services lists three main types of possible use: decisive, technical or informative. The production of ecosystem services on land is today envisaged using a strong spatial specialization, including coastal and marine areas. Ecosystem management considers the intra- and interecosystem connections and aims to maintain their capacity to provide multiple services in the long term.