---
title: why a city should run an ecosystem service valuation
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/why-a-city-should-run-an-ecosystem-service-valuation
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/why-a-city-should-run-an-ecosystem-service-valuation.md
subtitle: "six jobs the number does: the capital plan, the grant, the risk assessment, the finance office, the payor list and the report"
category: esv
---

# why a city should run an ecosystem service valuation

*six jobs the number does: the capital plan, the grant, the risk assessment, the finance office, the payor list and the report*

An **ecosystem service valuation** puts a yearly dollar figure on the work a piece of living ground does: the water a wetland stores, the heat a canopy takes off a block, the sediment a forested slope keeps out of the reservoir. For a city, the reason to run one is not curiosity. It is that budgets, grant files and risk assessments are written in dollars, and anything without a dollar figure is treated as free until it is gone.

This post gives a C40 resilience office and a GCoM town coordinator six concrete jobs the number does. If none of them matters to you this year, wait. If two do, run it. (We offer this to cities. We have not yet run one for a C40 city or a GCoM town, so the cases below are other people's.)

The marsh, the creek, the canopy and the aquifer do their work whether or not anyone counts it. A valuation is how that work becomes visible to the people who set budgets. It is not the worth of the living thing, and nobody should pretend it is.

:::johnson
**a pipe has a replacement cost. so does the marsh that does its job.** The city already knows what the pipe costs. A valuation is how the marsh gets a line beside it.

[see the valuation services and price ranges →](/services?from=guide#finance)
:::

## what an ecosystem service valuation actually produces

Start with the ground: acres of forest, wetland, grassland, park, canopy, riverbank. For each type and each service it delivers, published studies give a value per acre per year. The valuation multiplies the acres by those values, adjusts for the condition of the ground (a degraded wetland does less than a healthy one), and adds up the services. The result is an annual figure, broken out by service.

US cities already have one public set of these numbers. FEMA's 2022 per-acre values, used in its hazard mitigation benefit-cost toolkit, put forest at about $12,391 per acre per year and urban green open space at $15,487. The open-space figure breaks down into aesthetic value ($7,010), habitat ($5,890), recreation ($1,642), pollination ($350), flood and stormwater ($316), air ($201) and erosion ($78). Those are FEMA's figures for FEMA's purpose. They show the shape of the answer: a list of services, each with a number, that a reviewer can check. They also show its limit. Most of that acre's figure is aesthetic and habitat value, not avoided cost. For a stormwater decision, the engineering comparison (what it would cost to replace the work) is the stronger tool, and the two are never added together.

What it does not produce is a market price. Nobody is offering $15,487 a year to rent an acre of park. The figure estimates how the people who receive the services value them, mostly without paying. [How ecosystem services get a number](/guide/how-ecosystem-services-get-a-number?from=guide) covers the methods.

## job one: put nature in the capital plan

A capital plan compares options. A stormwater upgrade is costed against a bigger pipe or a detention basin. The wetland already holding water upstream rarely appears in that comparison, because it has no line in the plan.

Gibsons, British Columbia, is the case most cited. Working with the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, the town modeled the stormwater ponds in White Tower Park and put the cost of replacing their work with engineered capacity at about $3.5–4 million. That is a replacement cost, a one-time capital figure, not a yearly service value, and it is the kind of number a capital plan already understands. When Gibsons later rewrote its stormwater development charges, it cut them by 74%, crediting the natural assets serving Upper Gibsons. An MNAI study of five Canadian municipalities found that natural assets could deliver the same level of stormwater service as engineered ones in those five places.

**What the valuation gives you:** the natural option, costed in the same units as the engineered one, so it can win or lose on the merits. Use replacement cost for the comparison and the yearly service value for everything the pipe does not do, shown side by side, never summed.

## job two: make the grant application stronger

In the United States, FEMA has let applicants count ecosystem service benefits in hazard mitigation benefit-cost analysis since 2013. At first this applied only to acquisition and open-space projects, and only if the project already scored a benefit-cost ratio of at least 0.75 on traditional benefits. In 2016 FEMA extended it to all project types, with the same 0.75 test. A 2020 policy dropped the test. FEMA now lists that policy as archived, effective through March 2023, and its per-acre values sit in the toolkit's resources, so check the current guidance before you file.

**What the valuation gives you:** benefits a reviewer can trace to a source, which is what a benefit-cost analysis needs. Whether it changes the score depends on the project. Grant programs change, so check the current notice of funding before you plan around one. Outside the United States, the same case goes through your own funder's cost-benefit template.

## job three: answer the risk assessment honestly

GCoM signatories prepare a climate risk and vulnerability assessment, and the adaptation plan builds on it. Most assessments list hazards and score them. Few say which ground holds the hazard back today, or what the city loses if that ground degrades.

A valuation adds that column. The floodplain below the highway is not just "low-lying land in a flood zone." It is the asset that absorbs the water before it reaches the street, with a number attached. [Price what the creek already does](/guide/price-what-the-creek-already-does?from=guide) covers the town version.

## job four: give the finance office something to plan from

Finance offices are not hostile to nature. They are trained to manage what they can measure. An asset with no condition rating, no replacement cost and no maintenance schedule cannot be managed, so it is not.

A valuation gives the asset management plan the numbers it needs: condition, replacement cost, the yearly work, the maintenance it calls for. Recording the asset on an audited balance sheet is a separate decision under the public-sector accounting rules where you are. The management plan does not have to wait for it.

## job five: find out who already benefits

This is the job most valuations skip. An annual figure says what the wetland does. It does not say for whom. A **natural asset valuation** goes further: it traces who depends on the ground. The hospital whose basement floods when the wetland fails, the rail yard downstream, the water utility whose intake sits below the forest.

Those are the parties already receiving the service, and they are the first people to ask when the asset needs care. A city that can show a utility what a forest saves it in treatment costs is having a different conversation than one asking for a donation. [Your city is upstream and downstream at once](/guide/your-city-is-upstream-and-downstream-at-once?from=guide) takes that further.

## job six: make the annual report write itself

Urban Nature Declaration signatories publish nature goals and report progress every year. GCoM signatories report progress regularly. Cover targets count acres. A valuation kept year over year shows whether those acres are doing more or less work, which is the question a council will eventually ask.

## when not to run one

Do not run a valuation to prove a point that is already won. If the council has funded the creek restoration, put the money into the creek. Do not run one to put a price on something sacred. Some places are protected because people hold them in a relationship no figure describes, and [a valuation is not the worth](/guide/a-valuation-is-not-the-worth?from=guide). And do not add up numbers from different books. FEMA also publishes a per-tree value for urban trees, about $1,048.86 a year in 2021 dollars, most of it avoided heat deaths. That figure and FEMA's per-acre value are separate instruments, and neither should be added to the other or to a figure from another method.

## frequently asked questions

### what is an ecosystem service valuation?

It is an estimate, in dollars per year, of the services a piece of land or water provides: stormwater storage, cooling, clean water, air filtration, habitat, recreation and others. It is built from published per-acre values for each ecosystem type and service, adjusted for the condition of the land.

### how accurate is it?

It is a defensible estimate, not a measurement. Per-acre values are transferred from studies done elsewhere, so they carry transfer error, and they can double count if services overlap. Read them as an order of magnitude. Their strength is that every number can be traced to a source and every assumption can be challenged. Use them to compare options and to start conversations, not as an invoice.

### is an ESV the same as a natural asset valuation?

No. An ESV gives you the yearly value of the services. A natural asset valuation adds what it would cost to secure the asset and who depends on it. [The hub](/guide/how-a-city-values-the-nature-it-already-owns?from=guide) lays the two side by side.

### can a small town afford this?

A town can start with the list it already has. When it wants the numbers, our public rate card lists a regional natural asset analysis, covering every natural asset the town or region depends on, at $10,000–$15,000 by the size of the town or region. A single-asset natural asset valuation is $2,000–$5,000, by the size of the deal. Both are on [our services page](/services?from=guide#finance).

## next steps

Pick the job that matters most to you this year: the capital plan, the grant, the risk assessment, the finance office, the payor list or the report. Then [build the inventory](/guide/how-to-build-a-natural-asset-inventory?from=guide). If you would rather start with a conversation, [tell us which asset](/contact?from=guide&topic=city-nature-valuation).

## sources

- FEMA, *Ecosystem Service Value Updates* (2022 values, published in FEMA's benefit-cost analysis resources): per-acre values for forest and urban green open space
- [FEMA, *Economic Benefit Values for Green Infrastructure*, 2025](https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_bca_economic-values-green-infrastructure_2025.pdf): per-tree value
- [FEMA, ecosystem service benefits policy archive](https://fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_ecosystem-service-benefits-policy-archive.pdf): 2013 policy, 2016 clarification, 2020 policy and its archive dates
- [Earth Economics, "Accounting for nature in FEMA's hazard mitigation program," 2023](https://www.eartheconomics.org/all-publications/2023/10/5/accounting-for-nature-in-femas-hazard-mitigation-program): policy history
- [MNAI, case study: White Tower Park ponds](https://naturalassetsinitiative.ca/documents/case-study-valuation-of-the-stormwater-management-services-in-whitetower-park-ponds/): replacement cost of $3.5–4 million
- [Coast Reporter, "Gibsons credits eco-asset approach for lower drainage DCCs"](https://www.coastreporter.net/local-news/gibsons-credits-eco-asset-approach-for-lower-drainage-dccs-3407954): the 74% cut
- [IISD, Municipal Natural Assets Initiative report](https://infrastructure.iisd.org/research-and-reports/municipal-natural-assets-initiative-reports-value-natural-assets-canadian): natural assets matching engineered stormwater service in five municipalities
- [Global Covenant of Mayors reporting framework guidance](https://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Data-TWG_Reporting-Framework_GUIDENCE-NOTE_FINAL.pdf): risk and vulnerability assessment

## the series

1. [how a city values the nature it already owns](/guide/how-a-city-values-the-nature-it-already-owns?from=guide)
2. **why a city should run an ecosystem service valuation** (you are here)
3. [how to build a natural asset inventory with the staff you have](/guide/how-to-build-a-natural-asset-inventory?from=guide)
4. [what a city's green space is worth, and what the number is for](/guide/what-a-citys-green-space-is-worth?from=guide)
5. [price what the creek already does](/guide/price-what-the-creek-already-does?from=guide)
6. [your city is upstream and downstream at once](/guide/your-city-is-upstream-and-downstream-at-once?from=guide)
7. [hire a natural asset valuation for your city or town](/guide/hire-a-natural-asset-valuation-for-your-city?from=guide)