Monetary Valuation of Ecosystem Services and options for Value Realization in Developing Countries

This paper classifies ecosystem services under 5 groups: at thresholds, provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural; the first comes under Anthropocene and the last four from MEA. It considers issues raised by ecological economists on sustainable scale, use of marginal analysis, and distributional equity. It stresses the need for monetary valuation for resource allocation decisions and discusses problems in monetary valuation for services in each group. As the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” of governments in solving global environmental problems is not accepted by developed countries now, most developing countries face difficulties in implementing SDGs and enhancing provision of ecosystem services. This paper suggests that a decentralized approach involving local communities can enable eco restoration and achieve SDGs at lower cost to governments.