title: Use of ecosystem services economic valuation for decision making: questioning a literature blindspot.
abstract: Ecosystem Services economic Valuation (ESV) is often seen as a tool that can potentially enhance our collective choices regarding ecosystem services as it factors in the costs and benefits of their degradation. Yet, to achieve this, the social processes leading to decisions need to use ESV effectively. This makes it necessary to understand if and how ESV is or is not used by decision-makers. However, there appears to be a literature blindspot as to the issue of the Use of Ecosystem Services economic Valuation (UESV). This paper proposes a systematic review on UESV in peer-reviewed scientific literature. It shows that this literature gives little attention to this issue and rarely reports cases where ESV has been put to actual use, even though such use is frequently referred to as founding the goal and justification of ESV. The review identifies three categories of potential UESV: decisive, technical and informative, which are usually mentioned as prospects for the valuations published. Two sets of hypotheses are examined to explain this result: either the use of ESV is a common practice, but is absent from the literature reviewed here; or the use of ESV is effectively rare. These hypotheses are discussed and open up further avenues of research which should make the actual use of ESV their core concern.
authors.affiliation: IDDRI (Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations), Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint Guillaume, 75337 Paris Cedex 07, France. yann.laurans@ecowhat.fr
authors.forename: Yann
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Laurans
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rankovic
authors.forename: Raphaël
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Billé
authors.forename: Romain
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pirard
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mermet
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003657:Decision Making; D017753:Ecosystem; D058735:Environmental Policy; D010380:Peer Review; D011050:Policy Making