The Office of Management and Budget’s office of information and regulatory affairs has released a draft guidance for reviewing changes in ecosystem and environmental services in benefit-cost analysis as part of efforts to strengthen analyses of government investments and regulations.
OIRA collaborated with the Office of Science and Technology Policy on the draft document, which was issued in accordance with an executive order that seeks to strengthen the country’s forests, communities and local economies.
The draft guidance marks a “critical step to help agencies account more fully for costs and benefits linked to the environment,” reflects collaborations with economists and ecologists across agencies and aligns government best practices with scientific knowledge, OIRA Administrator Richard Revesz and OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar, a previous Wash100 awardee, wrote in a blog post published Tuesday.
According to the draft document, considering ecosystem services in benefit-cost analyses could help agencies understand tradeoffs among various ecosystem services and with other benefits and costs.
The document also recommends five steps for assessing ecosystem services, such as ensuring that the analysis’ scope is sufficiently broad to reflect key ecosystem services in the baseline and across alternatives and describing the links between regulatory alternatives and likely changes to ecosystem services.