ABSTRACT
Thus, valuation was developed as a tool for decision making. However, it is also used to find out whether the welfare of a society has increased over a specified time period. It is very common in newspapers to find references to the gross national product as an index of whether welfare has increased or not. In this review we will introduce a different and more relevant index, namely wealth per capita. In constructing such an index, it is necessary to value ecosystem services and, more important, the capital stocks embodied in an ecosystem. In doing so, essentially the same valuation techniques as used in decision making will be used.
