Abstract: Kenya, like many other countries, is increasingly relying on a Blue Economy approach to ensure its sustainable development, an approach founded on the premise of poverty eradication by providing sustainable livelihoods and decent work, supplying food and minerals, generating oxygen, absorbing greenhouse gases, mitigating the impacts of climate change, and serving as highways for sea-based international trade.

Key Messages
●    Consumers may avoid consuming mussels if they perceive a high risk of HAB contamination, even under government monitoring.
●    HABs have significant welfare losses for consumers, but policies to ensure food safety in seafood markets can improve social welfare.
●    Perceptions about HABs and mussel attributes play a role in explaining consumer preferences, but the link varies across contexts.

This paper presents a global synthesis of economic values for ecosystem services provided by 15 terrestrial and marine biomes. Information from over 1,300 studies, yielding over 9,400 value estimates in monetary units, has been collected and organised in the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD). This is a substantial expansion of data since the de Groot et al. (2012) description of the ESVD and provides an important juncture to explore developments in the use of valuation methods and the contexts in which valuations are conducted.