ODEMM – Work Package 6 - Cost-benefit analysis

Led by Salman Hussain

In WP4, management options were considered and assessed for regional case studies that reflect a specific threat to the member states in terms of failing to meet the operational objectives specified in WP3, which were themselves based on the high-level objectives of the marine Directives. Here, the economic costs of action (i.e. acting on the management options evaluated in WP4) and the resulting benefits to the environment are evaluated, along with the costs and benefits of alternative actions, including a do nothing, business-as-usual (BAU), scenario.

The objectives of Work Package 6 were as follows:

  • Use environmental valuation methods to estimate the cost of policy inaction (COPI) on management options across the four study regions, measured in terms of the deterioration in provision of ecosystem goods and services (ECGs).
  • Estimate in monetary terms the benefit of each specified management option, measured in terms of changes in the provision of EGSs relative to the counter-factual of policy inaction.
  • Estimate the costs of each management option across each of the four study regions.
  • Generate an estimate of the expected social welfare changes, ie juxtapose the expected stream of costs and benefits arising over time.
  • Identify the constituency of winners and losers and thus the extent to which the cost burden is distributed across the different industries and governments, and the vulnerability of these to such cost burdens in the different regions.

The following tasks were associated with the work package:

  • Task 6.1: Expert scoring of EGS provision under (i) 'business as usual' and (ii) each management strategy option, with uncertainty analysis.
  • Task 6.2: Environmental economic valuation.
  • Task 6.3: Valuation of COPI/aggregate benefits of each management option.
  • Task 6.4: Estimation of the one-off and on-going administrative costs to regulatory authorities of the policy-on scenarios.
  • Task 6.5: Estimation of additional costs to industry of policy-on scenarios.
  • Task 6.6: Overall synthesis and model generation.

Outputs

Typology and indicators of ecosystem services for marine spatial planning and management.‌

The ODEMM Approach to Analysing the Costs & Benefits of Marine Management Technical report or Chapter 7 Final ODEMM report

Web-based model of cost-benefit appraisal across the four study regions