The aim of the cooperation project between the Environmental Economics Unit of the University of Koblenz-Landau and the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture, Food, Viticulture and Forestry of Rhineland-Palatinate was to identify and quantify ecosystem services (ESD) that arise in the context of water development measures. In particular, the possibilities and limits of monetarizing these ecosystem services by means of environmental economic valuation methods were to be investigated. Such a monetarization, i.e. the expression of the resulting benefits in monetary units, serves the comparability of different benefit categories, e.g. flood protection, creation of naturalness or similar, and finally the possibility of aggregation to an overall value of the considered measures. If possible, the individual PSDs should be identified separately and quantified in monetary terms. As a result of the project, the monetary values of the change of PSDs should be determined and at the same time it should be analyzed how valid these monetary values can be determined for the respective PSDs, so that they can be included in future decisions on funding quotas of measures, if necessary.

The project was carried out on the basis of two project areas, the Queich in the Southern Palatinate and the Wied in the Westerwald. These areas differ clearly on the one hand with regard to their natural conditions and on the other hand with regard to their degree of achievement of the WFD targets. This should cover the widest possible range with regard to the conditions existing in Rhineland-Palatinate.

In summary, it can be confirmed by this economic study that the Blue Action and its further development to the Blue Plus Action are for the most part in line with the wishes of the population regarding the development of water bodies in Rhineland-Palatinate. People are still willing to see, as is currently the case, funds from the wastewater levy and the water cent being used for the watercourse development measures pursued under Aktion Blau Plus. They are also prepared to make further financial contributions in the future, if necessary, to achieve the stated objectives. There is a clear prioritization: ecological status is unreservedly considered the most important aspect, followed by aspects of human use of water bodies both in-town and, to a somewhat limited extent, out-of-town, as long as this does not run counter to the ecological objectives. The lowest priority in the regions surveyed in this study is for flood protection, which is desired on the order of 50- to 100-year flood protection.  However, protection targets exceeding 100 annual floods are considered excessive in the study regions considered here, and there is no willingness to contribute financially to this end.

From a methodological point of view, it can be shown that with the help of choice experiments, the individual aspects and goals of measures for watercourse development can be evaluated in monetary terms.  So far, these values can mainly be used to estimate the magnitude of the individual aspects and for relative comparison; the calculation of total values of packages of measures is currently only possible to a very limited extent due to a controversial discussion in the environmental economics literature. The study also illustrates that for a reliable estimation of monetary values Choice Experiments are needed on different levels, i.e. on the one hand on the level of comparison and weighing of superordinate categories like flood, ecology, recreation etc. and on the other hand within these categories. In this way, environmental economic valuation studies can make an important contribution to estimating the significance of Action Blue Plus.

The full final report can be downloaded here.