Using biological knowledge and decisions of society in spatial prioritization of oil combating. ICES CM 2007/C:02

Scientists and managers are often confronted with questions concerning nature valuation, at least in relative terms. In oil spill compensation assessment, for instance, the amount of money the polluter has to pay for to compensate the loss is defined in monetary values. It is however difficult or even impossible to put a price tag on some ecological values. A Finnish-Estonian Interreg IIIA project OILECO constructs a ranking system for populations to be used when there is a need to prioritize oil combating in the Gulf of Finland. Because of limited time and resources for oil combating after the oil accident, fast and difficult decisions have to be made on which populations should be safeguarded. Aesthetic and economic values have often had more weight than ecological aspects like e.g. recoverability of species and their status in e.g. international agreements. This has led to the neglect of e.g. many threatened taxa that can be as severely affected by oil spills. We suggest that the aim should be to minimize long term effects on the populations. This means that the ecological role, rarity and genetic uniqueness (probability to lose a genetically adapted population) of species should be used as a basis for valuation instead of aesthetic or economic values that can more readily recover after the oil accident. In the valuation and ranking of the species we use the decisions already made in the society to evaluate, which species should be considered to be more important than others. These decisions include e.g. nature conservation areas and the species ́ status in the IUCN classification and EU legislation.