Our $100b Natural Capital Asset: the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, Tīkapa Moana, Te Moananui-ā-Toi
Our $100b Natural Capital Asset: the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, Tīkapa Moana, Te Moananui-ā-Toi
This system-wide study of the Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand provides a systemic, cross-domain assessment of financial and intangible values, such as differing cultural and recreational values. It illustrates the formal and methodological challenges and provides a clear picture of the context of this approach. Communities and researchers wishing to better evaluate marine environment management strategies are likely to find it of value.
Excerpt: "This report adds to the knowledge base by building on prior work about the Gulf’s economic value and going beyond just updating estimates by expanding the scope of what’s being estimated to include non-market as well as market-based values and drawing out implications for decision making. It looks more closely at components of value derived from the Gulf as a set of functioning natural ecosystems, and hence provides ways of attaching economic value to the observed decline in the state of its environment to better assess the economic worth of halting that decline."
The report also seeks to incorporate differing population values related to the Gulf, for example the value to Māori communities.
Written by Peter Clough, Michael Bealing, and Ting Huan at the The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research NZIER
Published by the Hauraki Gulf Forum