TAILIEUCHUNG - What Are Ecosystem Services? The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units

If green accounting is to be taken seriously, the accounts must not be only concerned with the ways in which services are weighted (the missing prices problem) but also with the definition of services themselves. Moreover, it is desirable to define ecosystem service units in a way that is methodologically and economically consistent with the definition of goods and services used in the conventional income accounts. In a nutshell, the national income accounts add up things bought and sold in the economy, weighted by their prices, in order to arrive at an aggregate, such as the nation’s gross domestic product. | DISCUSSION PAPER January 2006 RFF DP 06-02 What Are Ecosystem Services The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units James Boyd and Spencer Banzhaf 1616 P St. NW Washington DC 20036 202-328-5000 RESOU RCES FOR THE FUTURE What Are Ecosystem Services The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units James Boyd and Spencer Banzhaf Abstract This paper advocates consistently defined units of account to measure the contributions of nature to human welfare. We argue that such units have to date not been defined by environmental accounting advocates and that the term ecosystem services is too ad hoc to be of practical use in welfare accounting. We propose a definition rooted in economic principles of ecosystem service units. A goal of these units is comparability with the definition of conventional goods and services found in GDP and the other national accounts. We illustrate our definition of ecological units of account with concrete examples. We also argue that these same units of account provide an architecture for environmental performance measurement by governments conservancies and environmental markets. Key Words Environmental accounting ecosystem services index theory nonmarket valuation JEL Classification Numbers Q51 Q57 Q58 D6 2006 Resources for the Future. All rights reserved. No portion of this paper may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Discussion papers are research materials circulated by their authors for purposes of information and discussion. They have not necessarily undergone formal peer review. Contents 1. 2. Standardized Units Will Improve Environmental Procurement and 3. The Architecture of Welfare 4. A Definition of Ecosystem 5. A Services Services are Proxies for Services Stocks Inputs and Practical Units of Services are Spatially Our Definition of Services Compared to Others .15

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• Light and Photosynthesis
• Oxidative Stress
• Diagnosis and Treatment
• Current Insights
• Future Advances
• Biomass crops
• C4 Photosynthesis
• C4 photosynthesis and biomass
• Sugarcane leaves
• Evolutionary background
• Guiding Force
• Energy Conversion
• Purple Bacteria
• Carotenoids and Photosynthesis
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• official opinion
• Medicine availability
• private sectors
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• Contingent Variation
• Molecular Chaperones
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