Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat. One of the priorities in the European Green Deal is the protection of Europe’s oceans, seas, and environment. The direct and indirect benefits people obtain from nature are referred to as ecosystem services. This concept provides a formal framework for analyzing and quantifying nature's contributions to human well-being. Valuing and monitoring the state of ES is essential for assessing the socio-economic consequences of service degradation and informing sustainable management practices. In recent years, the scientific literature on ecosystem service valuation has grown exponentially, and methods range from qualitative research to detailed quantitative assessment models.
To further contribute to the preservation of the marine and terrestrial environment for future generations, there is a strong need to further develop and implement appropriate methods for the valuation of natural resources, to understand how these values can be coupled with output from natural capital models, and how the combined insights can be correctly used within existing methods for project evaluation.
To meet this demand, this PhD expert course focuses on monetary and non-monetary valuation methods, as well as on cost benefit analysis and real options analysis as evaluation tools. As the actual actions to protect the natural environment are taken at the policy level, integration of the different work fields is required.
A five-day event with methods lectures, keynote speakers bridging methods to field applications, and paper presentation sessions with discussants from the pool of participants and senior researchers. Participants will stay in Amsterdam from Monday to Wednesday and will then travel to Antwerp for the second part of the Interdisciplinary School (Wednesday – Friday).
The final program will be shared from the beginning of December