ABSTRACT
Recently, environmental economists have developed and refined nonmarket valuation methods to estimate the worth of ecosystem good and services. Findings based on these methods indicate that natural systems provide tremendous value. For example, Costanza et al. (1997) estimate that the nonmarket value of ecosystem goods and services is worth nearly two times as much as the global gross national product. Despite the inherent dependence of economic systems on healthy and resilient natural systems, the economic value of ecosystem functions is often overlooked or undervalued by policymakers, particularly when economic studies are lacking. This is true for IAS in Florida (Adams 2008).
