To protect the oceans' natural capital and promote sustainable economic growth, the world needs to move beyond a business-as-usual relationship with its marine resources. For increasing numbers of countries, the solution is the "Blue Economy" approach. It allocates ocean space across traditional sectors such as fisheries and new ones such as offshore wind farms, intending to protect resources and benefit current and future generations.

Abstract

With increasing scarcity and spatial dispersion of tree resources, Uganda's forest sector – similarly to several other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa – has experienced a shift from the large-scale concessionary model historically used to access and harvest forests, to more
versatile models involving smaller-scale operators. The timber they produce is sold not only locally in producer countries but also across borders and beyond. Yet small-scale operators largely work outside established regulatory frameworks and as such remain invisible to national and international

Despite two decades of advancing the understanding of valuing ecosystem services, the global biodiversity crisis continues to face challenges in integrating nature's diverse values into decision-making. Barriers include powerful interests shaped by existing norms and legal rules, such as property rights.

The Values Assessment (VA) of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services shows that while a wide range of valuation methods exist to include nature's values in diverse decision-making contexts, uptake of these methods remains limited. Building on the VA, this paper reviews five critical steps in the evaluation of project or policy proposals that can improve the inclusion of nature’s values in decisions.