In order to protect biodiversity, policy makers increasingly require demonstration of its value. BESAFE will usecase studies to investigate how much importance people attribute to alternative arguments for the protectionof biodiversity and in particular how this relates to ecosystem services. It will focus on the arguments used at different governance levels and in different ecological, socio-economic, spatial and temporalcontexts. BESAFE will examine the interactions of environmental protection policies between governance scales.This will lead to an assessment of the transferability of arguments across scales. The Project will consider thecontribution that valuing ecosystem services can make in demonstrating the value of biodiversity. The resultswill be used to produce a framework that will give guidance on the effectiveness of alternative arguments andprotection strategies in various contexts. The framework will be made accessible through a web-based publicaccess database with associated toolkit. To ensure practical usability, the toolkit and database interface will bedeveloped in cooperation with stakeholders.