Rudolf de Groot ESP Summer School 2025

1-5 September 2025 | University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

Rudolf de Groot ESP Summer School 2025: Value Transfer for Ecosystem Service Valuation and Mapping

📅 1–5 September 2025 📍 University of Aveiro, Portugal

The first edition of the Rudolf de Groot ESP Summer School 2025, will provide early-career researchers with theoretical and practical training on value transfer methods for ecosystem service valuation and mapping. With the growing need to integrate nature into economic decision-making, understanding and experience on how to quantify, transfer, and map ecosystem service values is essential for both research and policy applications. Participants will learn to master, use and implement different value transfer methods and strengthen related skills during the Summer School. The work will consist of a combination of seminars, value transfer applications, ecosystem service value mapping, presentations, discussions with peers and several excursions.

🌍 Key Topics Covered:

✅ The role of ecosystem service valuation in policy and decision-making

✅ Methods for value transfer, including unit value, value function and meta-analytic function transfer approaches

✅ Application and mapping of ecosystem service values using value transfer methods

✅ Hands-on applications using real-world case studies

👥 Who Should Apply?

PhD candidates, PostDocs, and early-career researchers with a background in ecology, economics, geography and/or environmental sciences. Participants will present their research and explore how value transfer can be applied to their work.

📝 Important Dates:

📌 Application opens: 14 April 2025

📌 Deadline: 14 May 2025

📌 Results announced: 31 May 2025

Apply here

About the summer school

To transform the current economic decision-making process, it is important to mainstream nature into different forms of private and public decision-making. The valuation of ecosystem services in general, and monetary valuation of ecosystem services in particular, is playing an increasingly important role in the integration of nature into private and public decision-making.

Monetary valuation is institutionalized in official UN frameworks (such as the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting; SEEA-EA), is being addressed in private and influential initiatives (such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures; TNFD) and has the potential to contribute to many of the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). With the increase in available primary valuation studies (see e.g. the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database; ESVD), value transfer is increasingly used to estimate the (monetary) value of ecosystem services.

These monetary ecosystem service values are important: i) to raise societal awareness about the value of nature, ii) for sustainable natural resources management (by internalizing the value of nature) and iii) for natural capital accounting (by recognizing the value of nature in national accounts). This summer school will present, discuss and apply recent advances, considerations and applications of value transfer methods for the integration of nature in private and public decision-making.

Lectures will not only cover the various value transfer methods, data needs and sources, mapping approaches and validation techniques, but also reflect on the meaning and importance of ecosystem service valuation and natural capital accounting. Students will obtain theoretical knowledge on the functioning, pros, cons and suitability of the different valuation methods as well as hands-on experience working with the different valuation methods in a practical case study. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present their own research, identify the role of value transfer in their research, and discuss how value transfer could be integrated in their research.

Output

Upon completion, participants will receive a certificate of 3 ECTS (recognition of external credits to be determined by your home institution). In addition, there will be the opportunity to contribute to the joint journal paper that will be submitted to Ecosystem Services.

Speakers and Program

Luke Brander

Rudolf de Groot

Peter Roebeling

More speakers will be announced soon.

The program for the summer school is currently under development and will follow soon.

Eligibility

The Rudolf de Groot ESP Summer School 2025 is open to PhD candidates, PostDocs and early career researchers, with a background in ecology, environment, geography, economics, etc., and with an interest in the economic valuation of natural capital and ecosystem services. English proficiency is required and knowledge about ecosystem services is desirable. All participants are asked to present their current research and indicate how they expect to use the knowledge obtained in the summer school in their research. The summer school will take place from 1 to 5 September 2025 at the Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal. Participants are expected to bring their own laptops, with text (e.g. MS-Word), presentation (e.g. MS-PowerPoint), spreadsheet (e.g. MS-Excel) and GIS (e.g. QGIS) software installed for the practical exercises. The summer school has a limit of 25-30 participants.

The application will open on 14 April 2025.

Apply here