Climate change is impacting numerous natural world heritage sites – the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) being just one. There are calls for interventions to help sustain reef values in the face of climate change and while there are numerous techniques for assessing impacts on non-market values, most struggle to generate robust estimates for large and complex systems. This complicates the assessment of potential benefits of reef interventions. Focusing on corals in the GBR, we develop and apply a systematic, evaluative framework that combines insights from a coral-reef simulation model with those from research on reef-related ecosystem services (ES). We estimate the market and non-market benefits of complete control of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS) and global climate mitigation. By comparing the present value of ES with and without interventions, we can assess their potential benefits: between $5b and $28.5b depending on intervention and discount rate. Our empirical insights are specifically relevant to the GBR. Our generic approach to assessing the potential value of CoTS control at large scale and in data/knowledge-poor environments can be developed further and adapted to other interventions.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	non-market valuation, benefit transfer, ecosystem services, Great Barrier Reef, climate change, adaptation, damages avoided
Research Division:	Economics
Research Group:	Other economics
Research Field:	Ecological economics
Objective Division:	Economic Framework
Objective Group:	Other economic framework
Objective Field:	Ecological economics
UTAS Author:	Stoeckl, NE (Professor Natalie Stoeckl)
UTAS Author:	Condie, S (Dr Scott Condie)
ID Code:	146083
Year Published:	2021
Web of Science® Times Cited:	2
Deposited By:	College Office - CoBE
Deposited On:	2021-08-20
Last Modified:	2021-11-15
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