Presentation
Scaling Human Use Restoration Projects: Evidence from Deepwater Horizon Restoration Monitoring
DescriptionNatural resource damages associated with disruptions to outdoor recreation services are often a substantial component of the total natural resource damages for oil spills. Damages arising for reductions in ecological services are typically quantified using restoration-based approaches, where the cost of implementing ecological restoration projects that compensate for the injury is the measure of damages. In contrast, damages associated with reductions in outdoor recreation services are typically measured using economic valuation methods, which are known to generate biased estimates of damages and are the least preferred approach in applicable regulations and guidance. The main obstacles to performing restoration-based scaling for outdoor recreation damages include concerns related to feasibility, additional assessment costs, and the potential to introduce additional uncertainty into the analysis. To date, there has been little information available to aid practitioners seeking to better understand and evaluate these concerns. This study provides information from actual restoration projects to help fill this knowledge gap. We compare the benefits and costs for more than ten human use restoration projects that were implemented in Florida using natural resource damages recovered for the Deepwater Horizon incident. We find that the benefits of these projects far exceed their costs. This confirms that the valuation approach, which assumes benefits equal costs, would produce severely biased damage estimates for these projects. In addition, we demonstrate that the benefits of human use restoration projects can be measured at reasonable costs using methods similar to those applied in recent human use injury assessments. Finally, we present information on the magnitude of uncertainty associated with the restoration -based approach relative to the more traditional economic valuation methods. We conclude that the restoration-based approach reduces both bias and uncertainty compared to the valuation approach. These findings have important implications for the calculation of human use damages for future incidents.
Authors
Lead Environmental Scientist - Economics
Event Type
Paper
TimeThursday, May 16th12:50pm - 1:10pm CDT
Location291-292
Restoration