Economic Benefits from the Bay of Bengal Ecosystem Services

Md. Atiqur Rahman, Abu Sharif Md. Mahbub-E-Kibria, K M Azam Chowdhury

Abstract: The Bay of Bengal provides many ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being, such as nutrient cycling, fish stocks, water quality, biodiversity, raw materials, and climate regulation. Valuation of the benefits provided by ecosystem services can aid in designing more efficient policies for the protection and in reaching the environmental objectives for the Bay. The most commonly valued services for marine ecosystems are the cultural services, followed by provisioning services, and then regulating and supporting services respectively. Based on landings, herring-like fishes, Indo-pacific mackerels and Hilsa dominated reported landings data, while tuna and shrimp dominated in terms of landed value.

Keywords: Bay of Bengal, Marine ecosystems, Ecosystem services, Economic benefits