Integrated Economic and Ecosystem Services Modeling

The paper examines the importance of ecosystem services in the global economy. It features the GTAP Agro-Ecological Zone (GTAP-AEZ) model which has been modified to account for heterogenous land use as well as land supply within regions and the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) model suite which estimate the ecosystem services impacts on crop pollination, fishery stock and timber sector productivity. The results show that business-as-usual economic growth can lead to losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services. Policies such as agricultural subsidy elimination and investments in agricultural R&D could alleviate this adverse trend but its impacts on GDP are uneven across regions.