. The economics of biodiversity loss: Scoping the science . difference in the state of wild nature and therefore are not a measure of the economic consequences of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. For example, a comparison between the state of the world today and a predicted state by 2030 is not appropriate for understanding the net economic consequences of changes in wild nature over that period, because many other conditions would be changing at the same time ( population growth, climate change, technology). Quantifying and mapping how the biophysical provision of benefi
. The economics of biodiversity loss: Scoping the science . difference in the state of wild nature and therefore are not a measure of the economic consequences of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. For example, a comparison between the state of the world today and a predicted state by 2030 is not appropriate for understanding the net economic consequences of changes in wild nature over that period, because many other conditions would be changing at the same time ( population growth, climate change, technology). Quantifying and mapping how the biophysical provision of benefits is affected by the policy action This is the focus of Task 3 in this Scoping the Science project (Sections 3 and 4 of this report). The first step is to define what are the benefits or beneficial processes that will be evaluated - the different ways in which wild nature contributes to human wellbeing. These need to be defined carefully to avoid double-counting, which would compromise the results and the credibility of the overall evaluation. Section 3 of this report presents in detail our proposal for a classification of the links between nature and human wellbeing that avoid the double-counting problem and so provides a sound basis for economic valuation. For each particular benefit ( fisheries) or beneficial process ( water regulation; see section 3) one needs to understand how its provision is affected by the policy action ( what are the marginal benefits of the action). In order to do that, we need to be able to quantify the predicted provision for each of the states of the world considered. For example, we need to predict fisheries production under each scenario; these can then be compared to understand how the policy action is likely to affect fisheries. The importance of being spatially-explicit It is crucial that the contrast between benefit provision under different scenarios is done not simply in terms of the overall global value, but by attempting
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