The global decline in estuarine and coastal ecosystems (ECEs) is affecting a number of critical benefits, or ecosystem services. We review the main ecological services across a variety of ECEs, including marshes, mangroves, nearshore coral reefs, seagrass beds, and sand beaches and dunes. Where possible, we indicate estimates of the key economic values arising from these services, and discuss how the natural variability of ECEs impacts their benefits, the synergistic relationships of ECEs across seascapes, and management implications. Although reliable valuation estimates are beginning to emerge for the key services of some ECEs, such as coral reefs, salt marshes, and mangroves, many of the important benefits of seagrass beds and sand dunes and beaches have not been assessed properly. Even for coral reefs, marshes, and mangroves, important ecological services have yet to be valued reliably, such as cross‐ecosystem nutrient transfer (coral reefs), erosion control (marshes), and pollution control (mangroves). An important issue for valuing certain ECE services, such as coastal protection and habitat–fishery linkages, is that the ecological functions underlying these services vary spatially and temporally. Allowing for the connectivity between ECE habitats also may have important implications for assessing the ecological functions underlying key ecosystems services, such coastal protection, control of erosion, and habitat–fishery linkages. Finally, we conclude by suggesting an action plan for protecting and/or enhancing the immediate and longer‐term values of ECE services. Because the connectivity of ECEs across land–sea gradients also influences the provision of certain ecosystem services, management of the entire seascape will be necessary to preserve such synergistic effects. Other key elements of an action plan include further ecological and economic collaborative research on valuing ECE services, improving institutional and legal frameworks for management, controlling and regulating destructive economic activities, and developing ecological restoration options.

A common assumption is that ecosystem services respond linearly to changes in habitat size. This assumption leads frequently to an “all or none” choice of either preserving coastal habitats or converting them to human use. However, our survey of wave attenuation data from field studies of mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass beds, nearshore coral reefs, and sand dunes reveals that these relationships are rarely linear. By incorporating nonlinear wave attenuation in estimating coastal protection values of mangroves in Thailand, we show that the optimal land use option may instead be the integration of development and conservation consistent with ecosystem-based management goals. This result suggests that reconciling competing demands on coastal habitats should not always result in stark preservation-versus-conversion choices.

This paper examines the complex relationship that exists between poverty and natural resource degradation in developing countries. The rural poor are often concentrated in fragile, or less favorable, environmental areas. Consequently, their livelihoods can be intimately dependent on natural resource use and ecosystem services. The relationship between poverty and natural resource degradation may depend on a complex range of choices and tradeoffs available to the poor, which in the absence of capital, labor, and land markets, is affected by their access to outside employment and any natural resource endowments. The paper develops a poverty–environment model to characterize some of these linkages, and concludes by discussing policy implications and avenues for further research.