Suchergebnisse

Marine and coastal ecosystems - and thus the benefits they create for humans - are subject to increasing pressures and competing usages. For this reason, the European Union (EU) adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is to guide future maritime policy in the EU and aims at achieving or maintaining a good environmental status (GES) of the European seas by 2020. To this end, the MSFD requires the development of improvement measures, which have to be assessed inter alia by examining their cost-effectiveness and by carrying out cost-benefit analysis (CBA) before their implementation. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of environmental CBA in the marine context and identify and discuss problems that may hamper the environmental effectiveness of the MSFD. For example, marine ecosystem services are much less tangible than terrestrial ecosystem services. This implies greater challenges for the quantification of societal benefits in a marine context. One finding is that the limitations of environmental valuation methods regarding their ability to capture the whole total economic value of improvement measures are a potential source of problems, as the MSFD allows countries to disregard measures with disproportionately high costs. The trans-boundary nature of the main European seas adds to the complexity of the valuation task, e.g. due to the danger that benefits that occur outside of national territories are neglected. Moreover, the current state of knowledge on the functioning of complex marine ecosystems and the links to socio-economic impacts and human well-being seems insufficient to meet the MSFD requirements.

Several initiatives have been taken worldwide to promote international coordination and integrated approach in marine management. At the European level, ten years after the adoption of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the Member State strategies still present some ecological, economic and social challenges. This review identifies the minor, intermediate and major impediments (respectively defined as 'bottlenecks, showstoppers and train-wrecks') to marine management, resulting from a 4-year analysis of national, regional and European reports. Most of the problems are linked to the resistance of countries to collaborate and to the inability to integrate the work already carried out under other pieces of legislation. The European countries will need to better integrate and coordinate their actions in marine management in the second cycle of the MSFD, in order to achieve its final goal of Good Environmental Status as well as the objectives of other environmental policies.

In this paper we present a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) of the Achziv Rocky reefs marine protected area (MPA) in Israel as a case study following the implementation of the international Barcelona Convention.The Marine Strategy Framework Directive requires that Member States and affiliates members achieve "Good Environmental Status" (GES) of marine ecosystems by 2020 including improvement of Marine Protected Area (MPA) networks in EU marine waters.EU guidance documents recommend using economic valuation and CBA to support environmental decision-making. We therefore propose the application of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requirements in Israel, and its methodology as marine conservation guidelines by the year 2020.We reveal constraints of the Cost-Benefit-Analysis (CBA), appraising the Ecosystem Services Approach (ESA) and we show the relevance of MPA's economic analysis.We analyze these challenges with respect to Israel, an affiliate MSFD country that has not yet carried such CBA on MPAs. In this case study, we compare the current MPA situation with the expected positive outcome of MPA expansion.Our analysis shows that benefits from a marine reserve and its associated ecosystem services can largely exceed their protection costs, which should entice other organizations, from regional to governments, to follow MPA protection recommendations. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out a plan of action relating to marine environmental policy and in particular to achieving 'good environmental status' (GES) in European marine waters by 2020. Article 8.1 (c) of the Directive calls for 'an economic and social analysis of the use of those waters and of the cost of degradation of the marine environment'. The MSFD is 'informed' by the Ecosystem Approach to management, with GES interpreted in terms of ecosystem functioning and services provision. Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach is expected to be by adaptive management policy and practice. The initial socio-economic assessment was made by maritime EU Member States between 2011 and 2012, with future updates to be made on a regular basis. For the majority of Member States, this assessment has led to an exercise combining an analysis of maritime activities both at national and coastal zone scales, and an analysis of the non-market value of marine waters. In this paper we examine the approaches taken in more detail, outline the main challenges facing the Member States in assessing the economic value of achieving GES as outlined in the Directive and make recommendations for the theoretically sound and practically useful completion of the required follow-up economic assessments specified in the MSFD.

The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) sets out a plan of action relating to marine environmental policy and in particular to achieving 'good environmental status' (GES) in European marine waters by 2020. Article 8.1 (c) of the Directive calls for 'an economic and social analysis of the use of those waters and of the cost of degradation of the marine environment'. The MSFD is 'informed' by the Ecosystem Approach to management, with GES interpreted in terms of ecosystem functioning and services provision. Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach is expected to be by adaptive management policy and practice. The initial socio-economic assessment was made by maritime EU Member States between 2011 and 2012, with future updates to be made on a regular basis. For the majority of Member States, this assessment has led to an exercise combining an analysis of maritime activities both at national and coastal zone scales, and an analysis of the non-market value of marine waters. In this paper we examine the approaches taken in more detail, outline the main challenges facing the Member States in assessing the economic value of achieving GES as outlined in the Directive and make recommendations for the theoretically sound and practically useful completion of the required follow-up economic assessments specified in the MSFD.