Valuation of marine and coastal ecosystem services in India

Abstract

Coastal and marine ecosystems provide a host of services that are of vital importance to human well-being. We estimate the values of several provisioning, regulating, and recreational services using a combination of valuation methods. We find that the total value of these services in India was approximately ?1.9 trillion (or US$0.11 trillion in purchase price parity [PPP] terms) in 2012-13, which constitutes about 2.4 percent of India's net national product that year. Recreational services account for the largest share (45 percent), followed by regulating services (35 percent) and provisioning services (20 percent). These estimates do not include all the services provided by coastal and marine ecosystems; therefore, our estimates should be treated as a conservative underestimate of their total economic value. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such attempt at the national level in India.