Presentation by Julia Martin-Ortega from James Hutton Institute at Valuing Nature Network peatland project meeting in Leeds, 18 Jan 2012

1. Is the Water Framework Directive
experience useful for the (spatial)
prioritization of peatland restoration?
An environmental economic perspective
Julia Martin-Ortega
VNN workshop on assessing & valuing
peatland ecosystem services
18-19 January 2012, Leeds

2. Background
 Water related services are consistently highlighted among the main
services provided by peatland ecosystems:
 Water supply, water quality, flooding and pollutant dilution
 But the provisioning of these services is not so straightforward:
 ‘Dis-service’ of dissolved organic carbon?
 Is not so much that peatlands ‘provide’ water, but that many upland
catchments are peat dominated
 Not all peatlands offer the same flooding services (some may contribute
to flooding)
 But it is clear that damaged peatlands have clear negative effects in
water supply, water quality and increased risk of flooding
 IUCN report: business as usual will result in increased water deterioration
and increased risk of flooding
WFD

3. Background
 Entered into force in 2000, the WFD prescribes that all European water
bodes shall achieve the ‘good ecological status’
 Peatland degradation has a clear negative effect to the ecological status
of freshwater systems
 Therefore, peatland restoration is a necessary requirement for the
attaining WFD’s objectives
 The achievement of the good ecological status is expected to generate
substantial benefits (increased well-being) and the WFD itself requires
these benefits to be assessed and monetized
 This has generated a great research effort in trying to produce accurate
estimates
 A significant capital of knowledge on water (non-market) benefits and how
to estimate them now exists

4. Objectives
 Can this capital of knowledge be used for the economic
valuation of the benefits of peatland restoration to help in
the prioritization of policies?
 Focus on:
 Non-market benefits:
Crucial in the case of peatlands
More difficult to estimate, often ignored in practice
Added value of the WFD
 Spatial dimension:
Priority in the VNN

5. Key issues
 There are 3 main areas in which the WFD experience can
be of use:
 The definition of valuation scenarios
 The spatial dimension in the valuation of improved
ecological status
 Benefit transferability
 Neither the IUCN report nor the DEFRA Peatland Ecosystem
Service report mention the WFD as a potential source for
the economics of peatlands values and restoration, while
there are strong links
This can already represent an added value of this Project

6. Definition of valuation scenarios
 The definition of GES in the WFD is based on a number of bio-
physical/chemical parameters and hydro-morphological conditions
 The GES is assumed to generate an increase on public’s welfare
 This is measured in environmental economics through eliciting the public’s
WTP for the improvement (welfare change from baseline to GES)
 For non-market values, we use hypothetical markets in which a defined
environmental change is proposed in a survey to a representative sample of
the relevant population and ask them how much would they be willing to
pay for it (stated preferences technique)
 A key challenge is how to represent an improvement in a way that is
scientifically rigorous but also understandable for the lay public
(valuation scenario)

7. Definition of valuation scenarios
Hime et al. (2009): Water quality ladder
representing
physical-chemical quality

8. How much are you willing to pay for this
improvement? (contingent valuation)
Humber, UK
Bateman et al. (2009)
Spatially explicit valuation design: looking at distance
decay and substitution effects

9. Definition of valuation scenarios: flooding
Brouwer et al. (2010)

10. Definition of valuation scenarios: water scarcity
 Choice experiment: What option do you prefer?
Martin-Ortega et al. (2011)

11. The spatial dimension of water quality values
Brouwer et al. (2009)
People do not value
water quality changes
regardless of where they
occur
Spatial heterogeneity of prefences in the Guadalquivir River Basin (Spain)
ALTO
VALLE
CAMPIÑA
DOÑANA
Martin-Ortega et al. (2010)
Schaafsma (2011)

12. Water benefits transfer
 Estimating the benefits of water quality improvements in
all European water bodies is unrealistic
 Benefit transfer is required
 The AquaMoney project developed 3
common valuation designs to test for
transferability across countries
(not only international transfers)
€ €
€

13. Potential for peatland restoration
 Clear links between WFD environmental benefits and peatland
restoration:
 Economic valuation is to be used for peatland prioritization of
intervention, for which the comparison between the baseline and
the state after intervention is needed
 The way of valuing the benefits of peatland restoration is to
determine the value of the change in the water status
downstream in a specific catchment
This is exactly what we have been doing in the WFD valuation
 There is a potential for using existing WFD’s non-market benefits
values in peatland restoration
 Links are very clear in relation to water quality improvements, but there
could also be potential for flooding risk and reduction of water supply

14. Potential for peatland restoration
Main limitation: Peatland restoration is not the only
source of water ecological improvement
For GES values to be used as values of peatland
restoration the link between a certain restoration
action and the achievement of a certain level of
ecological status needs to be established
 Existing choice experiments might offer this
possibility, because they are able to elicit values for
different levels of improvement that can eventually be
related to a determined restoration action (i.e. not
necessarily the maximum level of improvement)

15. Potential for peatland restoration
However, this will not substitute the need for primary peatland
valuation studies, in which:
 A clear link between the biophysical role of peatland ecosystems
and the services provided is established
 This is translated into valuation scenarios capable of reflecting
the variety of services provided by restoration actions
 At the relevant scale and focusing on areas where this link is
clear (including spatial heterogeneity of preferences)
 Based on the modelling of theoretically led variables (rather
than best fit principles) to make them available for benefit
transfer

16. Is the Water Framework Directive
experience useful for the (spatial)
prioritization of peatland restoration?
An environmental economic perspective
Julia Martin-Ortega
VNN workshop on assessing & valuing
peatland ecosystem services
18-19 January 2012, Leeds