Abstract:
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment identified the regulating services as amongst the least understood
but potentially most valuable services offered by ecosystems. This lack of understanding of regulating
services has been a major reason for the overexploitation and degradation of ecosystems. The value of
regulating services is best determined through an economic production function approach, which derives
the value of regulating services as intermediate inputs into other economic goods and services. We used
existing scientific knowledge and data sourced from existing scientific databases and studies to develop and
demonstrate empirical production functions that measure relationships between ecological infrastructure
and the economy in fisheries in KwaZulu-Natal, along the east coast of South Africa. We applied econometric
analyses – a technique that allows for evidence-based analysis of observed data, based on existing scientific
knowledge. Our work demonstrates that existing scientific databases may contain useful evidence of
relationships between ecological infrastructure and the economy, and that decisions need not always wait
for the results of controlled experiments.
