A new perspective on valuating marine climate regulation: The Israeli Mediterranean as a case study

Marine climate regulation, the absorption and deposition of atmospheric carbon in the marine environment, is considered a valuable ecosystem service. Past valuations of this ecosystem service neglected to account for its temporal context, either by equating it with primary productivity, an underlying ecosystem process, or disregarded the temporal aspects related to its supply, thus leading to inaccurate valuations. This study presents a simplified spatiotemporal economic valuation methodology of the climate regulation ecosystem service, intended to address these shortcomings. The valuation was applied to the Israeli Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by accounting for permanent and temporary carbon sequestration and the use of Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) values. Based on different carbon prices, the estimated value of climate regulation within the Israeli EEZ ranges between 265.1 and 1270.9 € km⁻² year⁻¹, which is significantly lower compared with past methodologies applied in other areas.