Masters Thesis — SeaSoil Project

Social Cost-Benefit Analysis of cultivation and wild harvesting of seaweed in Norway- Accounting for impacts on ecosystem services

Johanne Kammerud and Guro Witzø Skansberg

successfully defended their Master thesis “Social Cost-Benefit Analysis of cultivation and wild harvesting of seaweed in Norway- Accounting for impacts on ecosystem services” at the School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) June 11th 2024, and received the top mark (A). Their supervisor was Professor Ståle Navrud, and the thesis was written as part of the SeaSoil project. They compared the overall social benefits and costs of wild harvesting and cultivating of seaweed for producing three different soil amendments: liquid biostimulant, kelp meal and biochar. The problem of potential toxic elements (PTE) was assumed to be solved for the three products. This Cost-Benefit analysis (CBA) also includes the monetized impacts on ecosystem services in terms of carbon sequestration benefits from cultivation, biodiversity damage costs from the intermediate loss of kelp forest during wild harvesting, as well as the reduction in CO2-emissions when these soil amendments replace mineral fertilizers. The analysis is performed under a set of clearly stated, strict assumptions about the cost and benefit components, which were relaxed in a number of sensitivity analyses.

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