There is growing policy and academic interest in transferring ecosystem service values from existing valuation studies to other ecosystem sites at a large geographic scale. Despite the evident policy demand for this combined transfer and “scaling up” of values, an approach to value transfer that addresses the challenges inherent in assessing ecosystem changes at a national or regional level is not available. This paper proposes a methodology for scaling up ecosystem service values to estimate the welfare effects of ecosystem change at this larger geographical scale. The methodology is illustrated by applying it to value the impact of climate change on European wetlands for the period 2000–2050. The proposed methodology makes use of meta-analysis to produce a value function. The parameters of the value function include spatial variables on wetland size and abundance, GDP per capita, and population. A geographic information system is used to construct a database of wetland sites in the case study region with information on these spatial variables. Site-specific ecosystem service values are subsequently estimated using the meta-analytic value function. The proposed method is shown to enable the adjustment of transferred values to reflect variation in important spatial variables and to account for changes in the stock of ecosystems.

Many countries in West Asia, defined in this study as the Arabic-speaking countries of the Arabian Peninsula plus Turkey and Iran, have enacted environmental conservation laws but regional underlying drivers of environment change, such as rising incomes and fast-growing populations, continue to put pressure on remaining wetlands. This paper aims to inform conservation efforts by presenting the first regional assessment of the economic value of coastal and freshwater wetlands in West Asia. Using scenario analysis we find that, dependent on the discount rate used, the present value of the regional economic loss of not protecting wetlands by 2050 is between US dollar 2.3 billion and US dollar 7.2 billion (expressed in 2007 US dollars). The method used for this assessment, however, is not suitable for expressing national realities adequately. We therefore suggest that detailed localized studies are conducted to improve insight into the drivers and the social and economic effects of wetland loss in West Asia.