Valuing coral reef protection

Past economic valuations of tropical marine parks inaccurately measure their economic benefits because they value the resource protected and not the protection provided. Instead, the economic benefit of a marine park should be measured as the savings from avoided losses in reef value that would result in the absence of park protection, net of any costs of protection. Proponents of marine parks posit that reef quality will decline in the absence of active park protection. The economic benefit of the marine park is the value of avoided reef degradation. An economic framework is developed to show how marine parks and protected areas ought to be valued. An example using data from the Bonaire Marine Park is given.