Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Marine climate regulation, the absorption and deposition of atmospheric carbon in the marine environment, is considered a valuable ecosystem service. Past valuations of this ecosystem service neglected to account for its temporal context, either by equating it with primary productivity, an underlying ecosystem process, or by disregarding the temporal aspects related to its supply, thus leading to inaccurate valuations. Here, we present a simplified spatiotemporal economic valuation methodology of the climate regulation ecosystem service, intended to address these shortcomings. The valuation was applied to the Israeli Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), by accounting for permanent and temporary carbon sequestration and the use of Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) values. Based on different carbon prices, the estimated value of climate regulation within the Israeli EEZ ranges between 265.1 and 1270 Euros per sq. km per year, which is a rather wide range, but significantly lower compared with past methodologies applied in other areas.