Description
Degradation of ecosystems, the services they provide and the over-exploitation of natural resources have been widely documented in terrestrial, freshwater and marine systems. This has occurred in large part because many ecosystem services have no immediate market value; hence their wider societal value is frequently under-estimated or entirely over-looked in decision-making. Despite the rapidly growing importance of valuing nature in the policy arena, significant scientific challenges remain in this area. The Valuing Nature programme will address these challenges by aiming to better understand and represent the complexities of the natural environment in valuation analyses and to consider the wider societal value of ecosystems services, even where these may have no perceived market value. This is a NERC-led six-year £7m+ interdisciplinary research programme developed under the Living With Environmental Change partnership in collaboration with partners including ESRC, AHRC, BBSRC and Defra.