Estimating the welfare loss of climate change impact on corals

Abstract

The economic significance of services provided by the corals is high especially for the coastal populations. Various services of corals strengthen and enrich the various constituents of human well-being. This chapter estimates the economic losses of ecosystem services arising out of impacts due to climate change on corals in different regions of the world. The economic losses have been estimated under different scenarios of climate change as the intensity of coral reef bleaching is strongly linked with the rise of temperature. For estimation of economic loss, benefit transfer method has been used where by developing a meta-regression function, the valuation of ecosystem services of coral reef has been carried out. Subsequently a statistically significant regression model is used to estimate the values of coral reefs at different marine regions with their current bleaching status considered. According to the prediction of the frequency and severity of coral reef bleaching under different climate change scenarios, we calculate the monetary losses of the coral reef ecosystem globally. Under the A2 scenario the loss could be of US$13.9 billion while under the scenario the loss could be US$15.14 billion. The difference in the losses in different scenario can guide us towards the costs of inaction. Keywords Benefit transfer method; climate change; ecosystem services of corals; valuation of services.