Data Matters : estimating monetary costs of a process of environmental degradation

The present article proposes a review of direct and indirect estimation methodologies of monetary costs referring to paradigmatic environmental degradation processes. Empirical data on cost structure of specific interventions can be used to apply state-of-the-art theoretical approaches to estimate monetary costs, characterized by different needs in terms data input and, consequently, by different precision in the resulting estimates. Assuming divergences between the theoretical needs and the current availability of information from official data sources as relevant issues in environmental accounting, the conclusions of our work highlight the operational difficulties in the systematic calculation of the total cost of environmental damage, on both aggregate and disaggregate spatial and temporal scales. These conclusions also allow to identify different options for improving the data collection chain associated to individual degradation processes, that would enable a substantial increase in the level of precision of the ‘cost structure’ estimates compared to selected, background conditions.