Valuing ecosystem services from forests: a multidisplinary field-based approach

Abstract

There are a number of land-use regimes in the world. Within forest land-use there are different management strategies. There are diverse views about the superiority of one regime or strategy over the others. The resulting debates cannot be solved from the current body of literature as there need to be net economic values of both marketed and non-marketed good and services in order to compare the outcomes from different management regimes. Because of the uncertainty of methodology and the difficulty in calculations, researchers are often limited to the valuation of marketed goods of forest and non-marketed values are not taken into account. Consequently, total goods and services from forests are undervalued and their contribution to the national output has been underestimated. As a result, decisions on forest land-use have been biased in favour of other land-use options. This paper reports on the development and testing of a method for evaluating the net benefits from forest that incorporates primary data on carbon sequestration rates, and biodiversity and soil conservations values. This data can then be used to develop optimal production regimes.