However, while there is general public recognition of the benefits of restoration, policymakers needs to become more aware of the financial aspects associated with either conservation (where pos- sible), restoration or, ultimately, continued degradation or loss of ecosystem services. In general the cost of conservation lies around 500 USD/ha on average (range 0.01–1,000 USD/ha/year), com- pared to a few thousand to up to several hundred thousand USD/ ha in restoration costs for the same areas. These costs, however, are dwarfed by the cost of the services provided over decades, which amount to tens of thousands and even millions of dollars per ha. It is in simple terms much more financially profitable to protect than to restore where possible, but even restoration compared to loss provides a benefit/cost ratio of 3–75 in return of investments and an internal rate of return of 7–79%. Thus, avoiding loss of eco- systems by initial conservation, particularly of forests, mangroves, wetlands and the coastal zone, including coral reefs, should be a primary objective from a cost-benefit analysis (Dodds et al., 2008).
As large shares of the world’s ecosystems are already degraded or even lost, ecosystem restoration provides a low-risk, benefi- cial, cost-effective and financially sound investment providing excellent internal rates of return – and with high public aware-
Ecosystem services value
ness and support. The implementation, however, requires broad multi-sectoral and multi-staker involvement to ensure proper success. This relates also to careful consideration to payer-systems and public-private partnerships (Holl and How- arth, 2000), as multiple sectors will benefit.
The cost of conservation and required management, while highly variable, is typically USD 0.01–1,000 per hectare per year, commonly around 10–15 USD/ha/year (). In comparison, the cost of restoration is from a few hundred dollars to 554,000 USD/ha for coral reefs as the most costly (TEEB, 2008, high scenario), compared to annual benefits from ecosystem servic- es of 1,010 USD/ha/year to 129,200 USD/ha/year.
A survey of 62,108 river restoration projects in the US report- ed a total spending of 1.6 billion USD or an average of 25,761 USD per river (O’Donnell and Galat, 2007), with water quality improvement as the most common primary purpose. In com- parison, 7.8 billion USD was invested in restoring the Florida Everglades ecosystem. It is however also important to moni- tor the effect of the investments and compare lower-intensity restoration with intensive restoration measures to evaluate the
Bilion of US dollars per year, adjusted to 2010 inflation rate
Open ocean Wetlands Rock and ice
uncertain data
Tropical forest
Temperate and Boreal forest
Grasslands Croplands
Lakes - Rivers
Other coastal biomes
Estuaries
Sea grass - Algae bed
6 000 7 000 8 000 9 000 10 000 11 000 12 000 13 000
Shelf Coral reef
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Source: R. Costanza, The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital, Nature, 1998.
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Figure 14: The values of ecosystem services (Costanza et al, 1998).
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