On Monday the 25th of May 2020 at 14.30 Delta Lady partners met Online to discuss monetary evaluation of Ecosystem Services, as a start of a series of academic and action plans discussions underlying the project. The 4th Online Partner Meeting on 1-2- April 2020 raised some interesting issues for which partners had little time to discuss which gave an important motivation for this online meeting with the idea for further academic collaboration through articles and a Special Issue. The Special Issue focuses on possible solutions to overcome current limitations for the application of Ecosystem Services approach for reaching sustainable goals. Important questions were raised during the discussion: How are we going to underpin the European policy instruments with PES assessments, or how are we going to incorporate PES in the policy instruments? How can we use certain approaches and methods in the policy process evaluation of ESs' economic value of different areas, as decision-making tools? Frisian partners raised an issue that most policy makers do not want to invest in nature because it does not fit in the economic development. So economic valuation should turn this around (and the recognition that a delta has special characteristics). The Irish partners aim to get ecosystem services recognized in the mainstream policy. The Italian partners want to put people’s perception of nature in decision-making processes (through surveys). There seems to be some common ground for an exchange of methods and approaches.
As a project with different settings (countries, parks and policy making processes) there are interesting challenges in comparative work:
- Comparison among different Deltas may help to understand how people from different countries perceive and value ecosystems and their services.
- We can generalize methods and test them in different contexts.
- We can better understand the potential to support decision making in comparing different policy processes.
The further discussion is planned to take place in June 2020.
