Approach And Methodology Of Coastal Strategic Decision-making Based On Ecosystem Intrinsic Value

With one third of the World's population living in coastal areas,humankind depends on the oceans and coasts for its survival.The resources and amenities of coastal area are crucial to the societal and economic needs.Coastal area,however,is under extraordinary and increasing pressure from human activities,which resulted in severely environmental issues in coastal area such as natural capital exhaustion,ecological degradation and environmental pollution,etc.Coastal strategic decision-making(SDM)is an effective tool for regulating human activities,allocating resources rationally and guiding coastal development towards sustainability.Ecosystem evaluation is of a vital component for all rationally coastal SDM processes.Ecosystem services is currently widely accepted and used for assessing the value of ecosystem.This conception,however,merely represents the instrumental and utility value of ecosystem,rather than its full objective value,results in a potential undervaluation to ecosystem value,and thus misleads decision-making process.The progress and practice of ecosystem value theory,the approaches and methods of ecosystem evaluation and coastal SDM were reviewed in this dissertation.The ecosystem value system and ecosystem intrinsic value(EIV)in ecology was defined.The approach and methodology for the evaluation of EIV was proposed,and for the SDM in coastal zones based on EIV was developed.Then,the approaches and methodologies based on EIV were applied to the case studies of the Principal Coastal Functional Zoning(PCFZ)in the coastal area of Xiamen Bay and the decision-making of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge(HZMB)construction,and compared with the approach and methods based on Multi-Dimensional Decision-Making(MDDM).Ecosystem has intrinsic value itself by theoretical studies;and EIV is an objective value that emerges from the existence of ecosystem.The EIV is independent of human will and any instrumental usefulness for limited human purposes,but dependent on the existence of ecosystem,the substance,energy and information expressed by the structure,process and function of ecosystem,and the base of any ecosystem instrumental value and services value.EIV can be evaluated by Emergy and Eco-exergy analysis.The EIV calculated by Emergy from the substance,energy and information of ecosystem represents the existent value of ecosystem.The EIV calculated by Eco-exergy from the structure and function of ecosystem represents the creative value and working externally capacity of ecosystem in a period.Both of them represent the stock and flow of EIV,respectively;and the total of EIV.The methods of EIV evaluation were applied to Xiamen Bay and Pearl River Estuary.The results showed that the EIVs of unit area in two areas were fairly consistency,and nearly 20 times higher than the globally average ecosystem services value in bays by Costanza et al.(1997),which was proved that EIV can overcome the undervaluation by ecosystem services evaluation.The approach and methodology of SDM based on EIV evaluation was developed to involve EIV into SDM process,which using Cost-Benefit Analysis(CBA)model,integrating CBAs in both socio-economic aspect and natural ecosystem aspect as a whole,following Ecosystem-Based Management(EBM)Principle,and analyzing quantificationally CBA for the tradeoff of the costs and benefits on the extended ecosystem by EBM to support decision-making process.The approach and methodology was used to the case studies of PCFZ in Xiamen Bay and the decision-making of HZMB construction to ensure sustainable development in coastal area.However,it is hardly to involve non-value information into decision-making.The approach and methodology of SDM based on MDDM was improved,and applied to the SDM case of HZMB construction.The results showed that the approach and methodology could involve all related dimensions and all information,and overcome the incomplete information in decision-making processes.Nevertheless,it depends on semi-quantitative analysis by expert judgment,and would be better for the non-structure and non-quantitative SDM processes.An intigrated approach of SDM was developed,which mainly bases on MDDM approach,combined with the approach based on EIV and stakeholders involvement that includes quantitative,semi-quantitative and un-quantitative results from experts,professional researchers and public to support SDM processes.