Valuing marine and coastal ecosystem services: An integrated participatory framework

The complex nature of marine and coastal ecosystems combined with the inaccessibility and invisibility of the majority of their goods and services call for tailored approaches to valuation. Furthermore, a deliberative approach is necessary to support emerging policy initiatives and decision-making processes, and this paper presents a participatory framework for valuing marine and coastal ecosystem services. The framework provides a coherent process for the identification and valuation of these services through the active involvement of stakeholder groups. The process begins with "set the scene", a stage in which institutional analysis and procedures for stakeholder involvement are deployed. A value elicitation stage, "deepen understanding", follows to determine the impacts of policy and/or project proposals. This stage involves the identification of the affected ecosystem services, the variations on the flow of services and the associated ecological, social and economic values. The final stage of "articulate values" fosters the integration of knowledge into policy and decision-making processes. The proposed framework adds communicative and informative features to valuation by advancing an approach that integrates deliberative methods for articulating the multiple values of ecosystem services affected by marine and coastal management decisions.