The present intervention has built capacities in multi-sectoral stakeholders from AP-PLAT countries viz. India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Thailand towards pricing of ecosystem services (ESs) using scientific methods and models. Both ecosystem goods and services are nature’s capital and support life and livelihood, especially in the context of marginal communities living in rural and as well urban settings. In this climate milieu, communities facing the brunt of climate impact and resource crunch being stuck in poverty-disaster trap are mostly dependent on ecosystem services for survival. Ecosystem services are the in-kind or intangible benefits that people obtain from various ecosystems being within or around it, which otherwise have been a need required to be purchased by the user. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) 2006, delineated four categories of ESs — supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. UNEP’s Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) recoined supporting services as habitat services to avoid double counting in overlaps and defined “ecosystem functions”, as a subset of the interactions between ecosystem structure and processes. It is imperative that valuation of these intangible services is important from conservation point of view but monetization of this value is relatively critical. Significance of valuation of ESs in global policy has been evident in Paris Agreement, while it has been strongly emphasized in COP27 for estimating damage and loss, emerging REDD+ and initiatives like Aichi Targets, and as well SDGs have included these methods in assessments and estimations.

This intervention has put forward a science-based approach in considering fundamental plea for plural values of ESs, wherein the valuation languages have been context dependent and special capacities were built among several AP-PLAT (Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Information Platform) stakeholders including policy planners, practitioners, administrators and academia as well to articulate it and facilitate to share advanced scientific climate risk information towards adaptation planning. The intervention has engaged the stakeholders in pricing approaches, methodologies and concept building exercises, as well online machine learning and both virtual and onsite national workshops in all four countries and in-person international workshops in Thailand, India and Bangladesh. It has also undertaken comprehensive and comparative pricing studies on wetland ecosystem services, through Participatory Action Research (PAR) in contrasting socio-ecologies, namely in peri-urban Ramsar wetlands (East Kolkata Wetlands) in India, urban wetlands (Monkey’s Cheek) in Thailand, and coastal wetlands (Tangaur Haor) in Bangladesh. The results have augmented regional preparedness by developing capacities in scientific, economic and socio-political scenario planning approaches on pricing of ESs for AP-PLAT partners. Outcomes would now sustain the built capacities in pricing other ESs and as well monitor, model and predict spatio-temporal values of ESs through adaptive learning towards ecosystem-based adaptations in resolving conflicts, assessing damage loss and reverting current linear extractive economic scenario with neo-economic circular conservation paradigms for sustainable future. The outcomes has been consolidated as archived learning resources, as well into a global curriculum for continued capacity building available for free online dissemination globally.