The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA) was the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and economic prosperity. Part of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) initiative, the UK NEA commenced in mid-2009 and reported in June 2011. It was an inclusive process involving many government, academic, NGO, and private sector institutions.
Chapter 22 of the supplementing technical report, titled Economic Values from Ecosystems, presents an economic assessment of the contribution of ecosystem services on human well-being, following the methodology set out for the UK NEA. Overall, the chapter makes the case that ecosystems and their services are economically very significant at the national scale, underlining the relevance of conservation and efficient management. It opens with an overview of the UK NEA methodology, the key issues which it addresses, and its limitations. The remainder of the chapter presents a summary of the published literature focused on the economic analyses of ecosystem service values, combined with new analyses that have been prepared partly or wholly for the UK NEA initiative. The new material covers the following topics: the value of environmental legacy giving; a meta-analysis of wetland ecosystem values; the health effects of broadly defined UK habitats; the CSERGE (Centre for Global and Economic Research on the Global Environment) land use change model; carbon storage modelling for the UK; the value of agricultural climate regulation; cost-effective biodiversity conservation; education and environmental knowledge; informal recreation; urban greenspace amenity; and the amenity value of nature.