A project of BONUS research programme “Wellbeing from the Baltic Sea – applications combining natural science and economics” (BONUS BalticAPP).
BONUS BalticAPP studied the supply and demand of marine ecosystem services across the entire Baltic Sea region in the coming 80-100 years. The project used a new combination of existing state-of-the-art modelling tools and recently collected data. The models created a link between nutrient loading, fishing, human wellbeing and the sea ecosystem and helped to evaluate the effects of agriculture and fisheries policies on human welfare. The project also identified long-term strategies to safeguard the various ecosystem services provided by the Baltic Sea. Anticipated climate and socio-economic developments were taken into account for those strategies. In addition, the project applied the concept of ‘Citizen Science’ as well as recent developments in information technology to test innovative, low-cost methods for collecting data on the demand of cultural ecosystem services like recreation.
Funded by: funding from BONUS (art. 185), funded jointly by the EU, Innovation Fund Denmark, Swedish Research Council Formas, Academy of Finland, Forschungszentrum Jülich Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (Germany), The National Centre for Research and Development (Poland),
Project implementation time: 04.2015-03.2018.
Project website: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/balticapp/.
Based on a sub-contract with the project partner Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), AKTiiVS was involved in the project’s work package 2 “Wellbeing from cultural ecosystem services”, which aimed to identify and assess the values of different cultural ecosystem services provided by the Baltic Sea, and to produce information on the spatial and temporal distribution of these services. The main focus was on recreation, but also other cultural ecosystem services that significantly contribute to human wellbeing, such as aesthetics of landscape, non-use benefits and inspiration, were covered. By implementing environmental valuation studies in selected Baltic Sea countries (Finland, Germany and Latvia), it was analysed how changes in the environmental quality and ecosystem services induced by climate change and eutrophication affect human wellbeing. Value estimates are expressed with qualitative, quantitative and monetary measures.
The main responsibility of AKTiiVS was to implement the valuation study in Latvia for mapping and valuation of the benefits from marine cultural ecosystems services for the Latvian citizens.
For the results of the BONUS BalticAPP project see the project’s website https://blogs.helsinki.fi/balticapp/publications/. See, among others also story maps “Ecosystem Services and Climate Change in the Baltic Sea” (https://arcg.is/1P5PWG) and “Recreation in the Baltic Sea under Climate Change” (https://arcg.is/1jKSer).
Relevant references:
Ahtiainen H., Liski E., Pouta E., Soini K., Bertram C., Rehdanz K., Pakalniete K., Meyerhoff J. (2019) Cultural ecosystem services provided by the Baltic Sea marine environment. AMBIO 2019, 48: 1350-1361, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01239-1. Bertram C., Ahtiainen H., Meyerhoff J., Pakalniete K., Pouta E., Rehdanz K. (2020) Contingent Behavior and Asymmetric Preferences for Baltic Sea Coastal Recreation. Environmental and Resource Economics, 75 (2020): 49-78, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-019-00388-x.