See this at: dsc.discovery.com| Added on 12/25/06

See less

Highlights: Chan said the first part of the model will be put in place in China, Tanzania, Hawaii and the west coast of the United States over the next eight months. The model was launched late Tuesday in Washington by the World Wildlife Fund, the Nature Conservancy and scientists from Stanford...

See this at: sevendaysvt.com| Added on 12/25/06

Imagine assigning a monetary value to bees pollinating a meadow. Or assessing the economic value of wetlands that provide critical habitat to endangered species and prevent coastal communities from being flooded. Right now, a logging company can put... See more

Imagine assigning a monetary value to bees pollinating a meadow. Or assessing the economic value of wetlands that provide critical habitat to endangered species and prevent coastal communities from being flooded. Right now, a logging company can put a price tag on a forest's uncut timber, and a real estate agent can assess the fair market value of undeveloped fields. But neither can measure, in actual dollars and cents, what those undisturbed ecosystems are worth in terms of the human benefits they already provide. That ability will soon be at our fingertips. Experts at the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics have launched an ambitious new project to assign monetary values to all the world's ecosystems based on the natural functions they perform -- from regulating climate to purifying water, replenishing soil to providing recreational opportunities. The science of "ecosystem services" is revolutionizing the field of conservation by giving environmentalists... See less

Highlights: The goal of the Gund Institute's new project, he explains, is to reframe the entire debate by capturing that economic impact so it can be factored into environmental and land-use decisions. Thanks to a recent $813,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Institute has...

See this at: uvm.edu| Added on 12/25/06

Author: Jeff Wakefield According to a new analysis, Robert Costanza, director of UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, is one of the world's top scholars, based on the number of times his published work has been referenced by other... See more

Author: Jeff Wakefield According to a new analysis, Robert Costanza, director of UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, is one of the world's top scholars, based on the number of times his published work has been referenced by other scientists in their published works. He has recently been added to the prestigious list of Thomson Institute for Scientific Information Highly Cited researchers, and one paper he co-authored, "The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital," which appeared in the May 1997 issue of Nature, has been ranked by Thomson ISI as the second most highly cited work published in the environment/ecology category in the last 10 years. According to the ISI Web of Knowledge Database, Costanza's 368 published works, spanning several fields, have been cited more than 2,500 times to date. The Nature paper had received a total of 530 citations as of August 2004 in articles published in scholarly journals like Science, Nature and Ecological Economics.... See less

See this at: ecosystemvaluation.o...| Added on 12/25/06

Why Estimate Ecosystem Values?

Why Estimate Ecosystem Values? See less

See this at: perc.org| Added on 12/25/06

See less

See this at: economist.com| Added on 12/25/06

A World Bank report, “How Much is an Ecosystem Worth”, examined techniques used to assess environmental costs and benefits. America’s Environmental Protection Agency describes New York City’s watershed protection measures. The International Tropical... See more

A World Bank report, “How Much is an Ecosystem Worth”, examined techniques used to assess environmental costs and benefits. America’s Environmental Protection Agency describes New York City’s watershed protection measures. The International Tropical Timber Organisation and the National Academies Press both published reports on environmental services. ABN-Amro reviewed 16 deals made under the “Equator Principles” in its 2004 Sustainability Report. Robert Stallard and colleagues at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have studied the Panama Canal’s water supply. See also Emissions Daily, the Ecosystem Marketplace and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. See less

See this at: nicholas.duke.edu| Added on 12/25/06

Americans would be willing to pay a onetime fee of $24 per household to protect tropical rain forests. A national park in Indonesia increases household incomes of nearby farmers by up to 10 percent annually. Taxpayers in North and South Carolina... See more

Americans would be willing to pay a onetime fee of $24 per household to protect tropical rain forests. A national park in Indonesia increases household incomes of nearby farmers by up to 10 percent annually. Taxpayers in North and South Carolina think it’s worth $139 apiece to maintain the water quality of the Catawba River. These figures, calculated by environmental economist Randall Kramer and his research team, confirm what many environmentalists believe but few have been able to document: that environmental protection can be assigned a specific economic value. It is a concept that is increasingly important as governments in both developed and developing countries allocate spending for environmental projects. Take the example of Ruteng Park on the small island of Flores, Indonesia. During a 1996 sabbatical in Indonesia, the Nicholas School professor worked with Indonesian counterparts and Duke doctoral student Subhrendu Pattanayak to determine how the establishment of this national... See less