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Climate change and biodiversity loss represent major challenges for both developing and developed countries. It is necessary to demonstrate that conservation efforts designed to address such challenges, such as national parks or nature protection areas, are not at odds with regional development goals. Forests’ carbon sequestration is well known, but they also provide a range of other ecosystem services. Additionally, they support local socio-economic dynamics such as cultural value and sustainable tourism. However, ecosystem assessments are time and resource consuming endeavors, and, in order to encourage consideration of forest conservation, a methodology applicable to any natural forest type in the world was created that allows quick total economic value (TEV) estimations. Existing methodologies and the scientific literature were reviewed. Given the prominence of carbon markets, this estimation is divided into carbon sequestration, other ecosystem services, and socio-economic impacts, which are combined into one monetary value. This tool is capable of offering policy makers, companies, and communities a quick assessment of a forest’s TEV, thus it is a step towards the complete valuation of various land uses and ecosystems often found in nature protection areas. Following the results, the tool’s contribution to the literature and future research needs are discussed.

The objective of this study was to define the value of the main market and nonmarket functions of fjord and mountain agroecosystems in Nordic countries by means of the ecosystem services framework. First, we used qualitative methods (interviews of farmers and other stakeholders in the area of study) to identify sociocultural perceptions of multifunctional agriculture. Next, we used survey-based stated-preference methods to rank and value in economic terms the most important functions (corresponding to the four types of ecosystem services) according to the local (residents of the study area) and the general (residents of a nearby area) populations. The sociocultural perceptions of multifunctionality among local stakeholders were similar, but differences in the relative importance of the functions reflected particular interests (agriculture compared with tourism). Both the local and the general populations attached great importance to the production and availability of quality foods. The general population showed very homogeneous preferences among ecosystem services, but local people rated them very differently. Local people ranked a more agricultural landscape very high. The total economic value of fjord and mountain agroecosystem was 850 € per person per year. The willingness to pay for the provision of ecosystem services under a policy scenario of further development of multifunctional agriculture clearly exceeded the current level of public support. The welfare loss that society would experience in a scenario of further abandonment of agriculture was even greater. We discuss the establishment of payments for ecosystem services for addressing the undersupply of nonmarket functions of agriculture.

The current debate of ecosystem services has focused more on monetary valuation methods and pay-ments for environmental services (PES) then on the classic economic analysis (i.e. assumptions regarding:sustainability, justice and efficiency). This paper examines, taking into consideration ecosystem services,income distribution from different land uses to stakeholders. We study the Portuguese common landecosystem, which is characterized as having a wide range of ecosystem services. Allowing that all thebenefits can be translated into economic value, we estimated the total economic value (TEV) associatedwith these territories on 5 different land use situations: forest, shrubland, water bodies, mountain agri-culture and other uses, and analyzed the current institutional arrangements around these territories.We found that the distribution of the benefits of different land uses is relatively inequality. The resultsshowed that the contemporary institutional arrangements of wealth distribution ensure a relatively fairdistribution insider of system; however this institutional arrangement is unable to ensure equitable dis-tribution of wealth by external stakeholders. We can conclude that different types of land use provide avery asymmetric distribution of income by different groups of humans: land owners; citizens of a country,and residents of Earth. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Human-induced changes in the natural environment are affecting the provision of ecosystem goods and services (EGS). Land use plans rarely include the value of public ecosystem services such as climate regulation and biodiversity due to difficulties in valuing these services. In this study, we assessed total economic value for five important ecosystem goods and services under five future land-use scenarios using varying levels of costs, prices and discount rates. Results indicated that at higher discount rates normally applied to commercial activities, and assuming the current prices for goods and services, net present value (NPV) was highest for landscape management scenarios aimed at maximising agricultural production. Potential income from services such as carbon and biodiversity does not offset projected income lost from agriculture due to land-use changes. At higher discount rates, NPV was negative for the two scenarios aimed at enhancing the longer term ecological sustainability of the landscape. These results indicate that income from carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation would need to be considerably higher than current levels in order to justify focusing management of this landscape on ecological outcomes. At lower discount rates (at levels normally associated with public investments), the more ecologically appropriate ‘mosaic farming system’ had the highest NPV, indicating that this type of system might be attractive for investors interested in longer term return horizons or wider public benefits. Higher income from carbon or biodiversity, or increased return from timber by using high value tree species, could potentially make more ecologically appropriate systems profitable at higher discount rates.

Expanding urban areas such as Queensland's Sunshine Coast face growing land use conflicts among urban, agricultural and conservation uses. Private allocation decisions influenced by potential market rents often exclude non-use value of environmental benefits leading to both socially undesirable and economically inefficient outcomes. We present the results of a choice modelling study in the Sunshine Coast to estimate community values for peri-urban land in production and conservation. We examine the implications of the value estimates in the optimal allocation of land for sugarcane on the basis of total economic value from all land uses including the preservation of unique and threatened vegetation.