Estimating Global Carbon Storage of Mangrove Ecosystems
The objective of this report is to provide estimates of global carbon storage in mangrove ecosystems by developing a dataset of mangrove biomass and soil carbon stocks at a country level across six years between 1996 and 2020.
Adding Water to the Changing Wealth of Nations
The objective of this report is to assess the feasibility of valuing water as a natural capital asset in at least 150 countries for possible inclusion in CWON. Water represents a portfolio of assets, including surface water, groundwater, and soil water (“green” water). Recycled water (“gray” water) is not considered a water asset as it is derived from water extracted from the environment and circulates within the economy. Ocean water is not considered an asset needing valuation as it is essentially limitless and industrial processes are needed to make it suitable for most uses (for example, desalination for drinking water and pumping for cooling).
Estimating the Global Contribution of Aquaculture: Towards the Changing Wealth of Nations
This study explored the feasibility of including the wealth generated by aquaculture in future editions to complement the information on other blue natural capital assets, including marine fish stocks and mangroves. The study concentrated on select pilot countries with significant aquaculture industries and whose production systems had sufficient data.
Global Assessment of the Economic Value of Non-Wood Forest Ecosystem Services
In this report, the methodology developed for the previous CWON 2021 report to assess the economic value of non-wood ecosystem services from forests is updated and extended. The overall objective of the meta-analytic predictive model developed in this report is to help generalize current economic literature on the value of forest ecosystem services to the world’s forest more broadly.
Valuation of Hydroelectric Assets in the Context of the Changing Wealth of Nations 2024
This report presents the methods and data sources used to value hydroelectric assets in CWON 2024 in their full detail, beginning with the rationale for valuing these resources in CWON.
Global Estimates of Carbon Stocks in the Vegetation and Soils of Terrestrial Ecosystems
This analysis provides results at the global level for aboveground and belowground vegetation carbon stock covering the period 2001–2020. It prioritizes the comparability of the outcome, providing consistent global results by using relatively long time series of global data and adopting an approach aligned with the 2006 IPCC guidelines.
Natural coastal protection services were included for the first time in the 2021 edition of the World Bank’s The Changing Wealth of Nations (CWON), which covered the changing value of mangroves as coastal protection assets from 1995–2015. Here, new data for 2020 was included on global mangrove distribution and assessed current flood risks and the benefits of mangroves in reducing floods. Historic flood risk and mangrove benefits (1995–2020) were re-analyzed as there were updates to past ecological (mangrove distributions) and economic (Penn World Table (PWT)) data.
