Valuing Forest Ecosystem Services. Why Is an Integrative Approach Needed?

Abstract

Among the many types of terrestrial ecosystems, forests have some of the highest levels of biodiversity; they also have many interdependent economic, ecological and social functions and provide ecosystem services. They supply a range of tangible, marketable goods, as well as a variety of nonmarketable and intangible services derived from various forest functions. These translate into social, cultural, health and scientific benefits for people’s quality of life. However, because they cannot be traded on a market, nonmarketable and intangible services are often perceived as free, inexhaustible and, as a result, underestimated. The human–nature interaction has affected both nature (via resource consumption) and society (via development of human welfare and well-being). Decision-makers, both public and private, often manage natural capital for multiple aims. In recent years it has been found that the single, individual approach estimating the value for these goods and services is not able to provide information that generates and supports decisions and policies in complex areas of current relevance such as the constant loss of biodiversity, climate change and global warming in close connection with the need for social development and ensuring an acceptable level of well-being for the greatest part of humanity. An integrated assessment with advanced techniques and methods using a pluralist framework of a heterogeneous set of values is considered a better approach to the valuation of such complex nature of the ecosystem goods and services. This assessment should take into account both costs and benefits trade-off issues among the multiple uses of ecosystem goods and/or services, especially the relationships between them and how they influence or determine the economic, social and cultural development of society. It should also consider the estimation of the complex inverse effect, from society to nature, whose goods and services can be diminished to exhaustion by the extensive and intensive anthropization of natural ecosystems with major impact on the number and quality of goods and services provided by ecosystems. Research has shown that applying an integrative assessment approach that utilizes tools developed by sustainability sciences could be an important component of future environmental policy making.

Inclusive landscape governance: Forest welfare services and forest value orientation in the National Luxury Forest, South Korea

“…These approaches seem to be from opposite directions, but their crucial concept is how humans are associated with nature through their beings and doings (King and Dickinson 2022). Forests play a central role in greenspace as they hold the highest levels of biodiversity and gross surface; accordingly, FES should be approached from holistic approaches, including ecological, economic, and social functions (Baciu et al 2021). The attributes of FES can be tri-parted -direct, indirect, and regulating ecosystem services (Bimrah et al 2022; Muradian and Gómez-Baggethun 2022; Taye et al 2021; Wang et al 2022).…”

“…Forests take the central role in greenspace. Greenspace refers to a human-modi ed or natural outdoor environment containing various amounts of vegetation; among several types of greenspace, the forest has the highest level of biodiversity (Baciu et al 2021). Human involvement in greenspace is associated with ecosystem services in direct and indirect manners (Bimrah et Value orientation is a fundamental belief regarding an ethical direction from a person or a social group.…”

A Bibliometric Analysis on the Effects of Land Use Change on Ecosystem Services: Current Status, Progress, and Future Directions

“…Therefore, the critical standard for a core author is 4.10, so 152 authors can be treated as core authors. Collectively with Peter H. Verburg (30), Brett A.Bryan (20), Stephen Polasky (17), Sandra Lavorel (15), and Catharina J. E. Schulp (13) represent the top five prolific authors in the field.…”

“…A worldwide upsurge in assessing the worth of ecosystem services has been observed, and this has increased scientific interest in the subject. At present, researchers in this field are focusing on the following aspects: (1) ecosystem services in important ecological areas such as river basins [6][7][8], nature reserves [9,10], and forests [11][12][13]; (2) the multiple perspectives of cultivated land protection [14][15][16], contraction scenarios [17,18], and landscape heterogeneity [19,20];…”

Climate Change and Air Pollution Effect on Forest Ecosystems

“…Active remote-sensing technology, with proven advantages and characteristic limitations, can represent the foundation of multiple approaches, aiming to quantify the capacity of the forest ecosystem to provide services [9]. Representing an immense opportunity to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration, soil stabilization and natural disaster mitigation, an integrative approach for valuing and assessing forest ES is needed, taking into account the many interdependent factors involving ES and their associated values, as well as the current challenges that people face [10].…”