Data from: The increasing benefits from ecosystems

Ecosystems provide important services and are becoming increasingly scarce
relative to market goods. Substantial policy shifts are currently underway
in the US and elsewhere to integrate the value of ecosystem services in
investment appraisal and regulatory analysis. Yet, policy guidelines need
to be improved by providing direction on how to account for the fact that
benefits from ecosystem services increase over time as incomes grow and
ecosystem services become scarcer. Building on economic theory and best
available evidence, we propose a simple relative price change rule to
adjust the benefits from future ecosystem services. Applying this rule
will better enable governments to reflect the importance of scarce
ecosystems for current and future generations in public decision-making.
This is critical as conservation efforts have so far fallen short of their
stated goals.