Linking marine habitats and economic values: A spatial scaling methodology for valuing societal benefits

There is a growing call to better understand society's relationship with the natural environment and the environment's economic contribution to the economy and human well-being. This paper presents a new methodology for estimating the spatial monetary value of the marine environment at sub-national scales which integrates recent developments in the spatial mapping of marine habitats with those in marine natural capital accounting, coupled with an improved understanding of the links between natural capital and ecosystem services. While this methodology has direct relevance to environmental planning, management and natural capital accounting across the world, for demonstration purposes, the application here focuses on Northern Ireland's marine waters, and its marine protected areas, from UK-wide evidence. Through this method, indicative monetary values of societal benefits gained from Northern Ireland marine waters in 2019 are in the region of £51.1–83.3 million (US$65.2–106.4 million) when considering eight societal benefits currently amenable to valuation at the national UK level. The strengths and limitations of the approach are acknowledged and to operationalise this approach, an Excel-based decision support tool, the BEACH (Benefit Evaluation through Assessment of Component Habitats) tool, has been developed to make value estimations accessible to a wider range of stakeholders.