Ascribing value to the adaptive and mitigative services they provide will help to advance planning and operational decisions about how to protect, expand, reward, and ultimately prioritize the services they provide in the short and long term. [...] This data will not be directly comparable in diverse geographies and demographics, but is intended to provide a baseline understanding of natural asset categories and the ecosystem services they provide, the key LCR benefits of these assets and services under changing climate conditions, and best practice valuation techniques for accounting for these assets in municipal asset management and invest. [...] Adequate knowledge of the asset/ecosystem is necessary to link changes in eco- system structure and function to the provision of goods and services that the asset provides.2 It is important, especially with the exacerbating effects of climate change, to consider these impacts on all our assets, including natural assets, to ensure we are proactively capable of responding. [...] After obtaining the results of the SWMM, the Town was able to obtain an economic value for the WPP system and compare the efficacy and cost of different engineered stormwater management strategies. [...] For example, urban forests remove 725 metric tons of pollution annually for the City of Seattle, a service valued at $5.62 million.29 If changes in the regulatory and habitat functions of ecosystems affect the marketed production activities of an economy, then the effects of these changes are transmitted to individuals through the price system via changes in the costs and prices of goods and servi.
- Pages
- 41
- Published in
- Canada
