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The report focuses on the Nordic coast since the Nordic countries have this environment in common and it is significant for the historical and economic development of coastal areas.The aim is to highlight the Nordic coastal biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as drivers affecting them and policy options for their conservation and sustainable use. The report brings together a wide variety of knowledge from science, humanities and other knowledge systems such as traditional knowledge.The report is a result from Nordic co-operation among Denmark, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and the Åland Islands.It is based on a process developed within the framework of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services IPBES, where it is used to guide regional and subregional assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Undesirable landscape changes, especially from large infrastructure projects, may give rise to large welfare losses due to degraded landscape experiences. These losses are largely unaccounted for in Nordic countries’ planning processes. There is a need to develop practical methods of including people’s preferences and the value of landscape impacts in policy assessments and decision-making. The project aims to explore how the ecosystem service approach and values of landscape experiences can be better incorporated in actual cases. The project developed a two-step approach to assess, value and incorporate landscape impacts and tested these in case studies based on EIA documentation. We found that despite the lack of information generated in the EIAs, the step-wise method significantly improved upon evidence and conclusions of how people are impacted due to landscape changes.

This study describes a proposal for a new tool on how to incorporate an ecosystem services approach into the maritime spatial planning process. The proposed tool provides a prototype for a stepwise methodology to analyze linkages between maritime activities and ecosystem services, and to assess the status of marine ecosystem services as a part of the MSP process. The report addresses the Nordic cooperation needs, economic valuation of ecosystem services and trade-offs between concurrent uses of marine areas and ecosystem services. The study shows that making use of the proposed methodology enables and facilitates the incorporation of an ecosystem services approach in the planning process. However, in order to fully assess its possibilities, and the needs for further improvements, future work should focus on applying the methodology on a comprehensive marine spatial planning case.

Undesirable landscape changes, especially from large infrastructure projects, may give rise to large welfare losses due to degraded landscape experiences. These losses are largely unaccounted for in Nordic countries’ planning processes. There is a need to develop practical methods of including people’s preferences and the value of landscape impacts in policy assessments and decision-making. The project aims to explore how the ecosystem service approach and values of landscape experiences can be better incorporated in actual cases. The project developed a two-step approach to assess, value and incorporate landscape impacts and tested these in case studies based on EIA documentation. We found that despite the lack of information generated in the EIAs, the step-wise method significantly improved upon evidence and conclusions of how people are impacted due to landscape changes.

Human wellbeing is dependent upon and benefit from ecosystemservices which are delivered by well-functioning ecosystems.Ecosystem services can be mapped and assessed consistentlywithin an ecosystem service framework. This project aimsto explore the use and usefulness of the ecosystem serviceframework in freshwater management, particularly watermanagement according to the Water Framework Directive (WFD).There are several examples of how ecosystem services have beenused in WFD related studies in all the Nordic countries. Mostof them involve listing, describing and categorizing freshwaterecosystem services, while there are few comprehensive CostBenefit Analyses and analyses of disproportionate costs that applythis framework. More knowledge about ecosystem services and thevalue of ecosystem services for freshwater systems is needed.

The emergence of the ecosystem services concept suggests that economic valuation studies are already fulfilling a role in raising awareness by demonstrating the loss of nature’s goods and services using monetary indicators. In order to have future relevance in capturing value and giving support to policy-makers, valuation methods must specifically address resource accounting, priority setting, and instrument design. This report provides an overview of economic valuation methods of ecosystem services from watersheds in the Nordic countries. The study was commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers and conducted by The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, The Norwegian Institute of Water Research and Sweco Norge during the period May – November 2011. The study indicates that economic valuation methods can be applied to watershed management in multiple ways. However, policy makers should be wary of “one size fits all” valuation estimates that appear ready to use across different watershed types and stakeholder interests.

Externalities exist in the form of external costs and external benefits. External costs occur when an economic subject causes a loss in welfare to another one and does not compensate this change. A compensation for this change in welfare due to external costs would eliminate the market imperfection caused by externalities. This procedure is called internalisation of externalities because external costs are considered in market mechanisms. In a situation where all externalities are internalised there is no longer any relevant externality, although there are, of course, still emissions and damages. For example, a cost–benefit analysis requires the estimation of the marginal damage costs (MDC) and marginal avoidance costs (MAC). These values should be equal in order to determine the optimum instruments and, therefore, the optimum total emissions. A reasonable and practicable dimension which enables the comparison of costs and benefits are monetary values. Therefore, the impact pathway approach is used in order to estimate the costs of emissions and benefits of emission reduction. The costs reveal the preferences of the society, that is the willingness to pay to avoid the risk of these damages. With this assessment method, a general path from emissions to the external costs and benefits in the reduction of emissions is followed to estimate them as transparently, consistently and comprehensively as possible. External Costs per...