The economic value of the planet's forest ecosystems: A meta-analysis
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Author(s)
Taye, Fitalew Agimass
Folkersen, Maja Vinde
Fleming, Christopher M
Buckwell, Andrew
Mackey, Brendan
Diwakar, KC
Le, Dung
Hasan, Syezlin
Saint Ange, Chantal
Year published
2022
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The planet’s forests provide many benefits that are essential to society’s continued wellbeing. Yet forests are subjected to continued loss and degradation from extractive activities such as logging and clearing for mining and agriculture. Whilst these activities provide financial benefit to those who carry them out, unless we understand the value of what is lost when the forests are lost and degraded, we will not be able to make informed decisions about their use and management. These benefits derive from what are called ‘ecosystem services’ which include three broad categories: provisioning services – such as wood, food, ...
View more >The planet’s forests provide many benefits that are essential to society’s continued wellbeing. Yet forests are subjected to continued loss and degradation from extractive activities such as logging and clearing for mining and agriculture. Whilst these activities provide financial benefit to those who carry them out, unless we understand the value of what is lost when the forests are lost and degraded, we will not be able to make informed decisions about their use and management. These benefits derive from what are called ‘ecosystem services’ which include three broad categories: provisioning services – such as wood, food, and fibre; regulating services – such as carbon storage, water filtration, and coastal protection; and cultural services – such as recreation, aesthetics, and spiritual wellbeing. How much society values those forest ecosystem services that are bought and sold through markets, such as wood, can be readily assessed economically. However, it is not so straightforward for many other ecosystem services that are not or cannot be exchanged on a market. Rather, they are provided by nature for “free” as what are known as common pool resources or public goods. As such, their true value to society is often opaque, which means we tend to over-use or spoil them. From an economic perspective, this is due to ‘market failures’ – as most of the forest ecosystem services do not have their true scarcity value reflected in market prices nor the full cost of their use. In most instances, these are the forests’ regulating ecosystem services. Lack of such comprehensive economic valuation is a major barrier to well-informed policy and forest management for wider society’s benefit. In cases where there is conflict between marketed and non-marketed demands on forest goods and services, it tends to be the marketed uses that are given priority as the benefits are captured privately and often more immediately. In many instances, such a timber and biomass energy extraction, marketed uses are often damaging to regulating and cultural forest ecosystem services. In other uses such as eco-tourism and other cultural services, it can be more benign. Economic valuation of ecosystem services is a way of demonstrating their importance to society and decision making, which can help improve forest policy, planning and management. We can deduce both marketed and non-marketed ecosystem service values using different valuation techniques. The consideration of both helps us to make more informed decisions about forests and related environmental issues such as climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. This information can also help to promote or design financial incentives, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, that aim to support the conservation of forests and preserve the otherwise nonmarketed ecosystem services they provide.
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View more >The planet’s forests provide many benefits that are essential to society’s continued wellbeing. Yet forests are subjected to continued loss and degradation from extractive activities such as logging and clearing for mining and agriculture. Whilst these activities provide financial benefit to those who carry them out, unless we understand the value of what is lost when the forests are lost and degraded, we will not be able to make informed decisions about their use and management. These benefits derive from what are called ‘ecosystem services’ which include three broad categories: provisioning services – such as wood, food, and fibre; regulating services – such as carbon storage, water filtration, and coastal protection; and cultural services – such as recreation, aesthetics, and spiritual wellbeing. How much society values those forest ecosystem services that are bought and sold through markets, such as wood, can be readily assessed economically. However, it is not so straightforward for many other ecosystem services that are not or cannot be exchanged on a market. Rather, they are provided by nature for “free” as what are known as common pool resources or public goods. As such, their true value to society is often opaque, which means we tend to over-use or spoil them. From an economic perspective, this is due to ‘market failures’ – as most of the forest ecosystem services do not have their true scarcity value reflected in market prices nor the full cost of their use. In most instances, these are the forests’ regulating ecosystem services. Lack of such comprehensive economic valuation is a major barrier to well-informed policy and forest management for wider society’s benefit. In cases where there is conflict between marketed and non-marketed demands on forest goods and services, it tends to be the marketed uses that are given priority as the benefits are captured privately and often more immediately. In many instances, such a timber and biomass energy extraction, marketed uses are often damaging to regulating and cultural forest ecosystem services. In other uses such as eco-tourism and other cultural services, it can be more benign. Economic valuation of ecosystem services is a way of demonstrating their importance to society and decision making, which can help improve forest policy, planning and management. We can deduce both marketed and non-marketed ecosystem service values using different valuation techniques. The consideration of both helps us to make more informed decisions about forests and related environmental issues such as climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. This information can also help to promote or design financial incentives, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, that aim to support the conservation of forests and preserve the otherwise nonmarketed ecosystem services they provide.
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© 2022 Griffith University. The copyright in this work is owned by the publisher. It is licensed under a CC BY NC ND 4.0 licence, which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Note
Griffith Climate Action Beacon Science Informing Policy Briefing Note 1/22
Subject
forest ecosystem services
economic valuation
conservation