Ecological-economic analysis of wetlands: scientific integration for management and policy

Wetlands ail over the world have been lost or are threatened in spite of va rious international agreements and national policies. This is caused by: (1 ) the public nature of many wetlands products and services; (2) user extern alities imposed on other stakeholders; and (3) policy intervention failures that are due to a lack of consistency among government policies in differe nt areas (economics, environment, nature protection, physical planning, etc .). All three causes are related to information failures which in turn can be linked to the complexity and 'invisibility' of spatial relationships amo ng groundwater, surface water and wetland vegetation. Integrated wetland re search combining social and natural sciences can help in part to solve the information failure to achieve the required consistency across various gove rnment policies. An integrated wetland research framework suggests that a c ombination of economic valuation, integrated modelling, stakeholder analysi s, and multi-criteria evaluation can provide complementary insights into su stainable and welfare-optimising wetland management and policy. Subsequentl y, each of the various components of such integrated wetland research is re viewed and related to wetland management policy. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.