Valuation of public goods and ecosystem services provided by agriculture

Pasture-based livestock systems, often located in High Value Nature farmland areas, hold the greatest potential to deliver public goods across European agricultural systems. They play an important role in preserving agricultural landscapes, farmland biodiversity, cultural heritage, and in sustaining rural development. However, many of these functions are ignored in evaluation frameworks because public goods do not have market price and are often ignored in policy design, so farmers do not get the appropriate incentives to provide them. Different conceptual frameworks can be utilized to evaluate the multiple functions or services of these systems: Multifunctional Agriculture, Ecosystem Services, and Total Economic Value. We analyze the common characteristics of these concepts (e.g. they place human benefits and societal demands at the core of their definitions), their specificities (e.g. use of different units of analysis and spatial-temporal scales), and how they can be embedded in the wider concept of sustainability. Finally, we illustrate how the different concepts can be combined to evaluate pasture-based livestock farming systems from a socio-cultural and economic perspective. The public goods (ecosystem services) provided by representative case studies in Mediterranean and Nordic regions are quantified (also in monetary terms) under different environmental/policy scenarios. The results show that there is a clear underestimation of the socio-cultural and economic values of ecosystem services provided by these farming systems. They also show that the social welfare loss linked to further abandonment of livestock farming, and the associated environmental degradation, is very large. From a societal perspective, it is necessary to jointly measure the biophysical, socio-cultural and monetary values of ecosystem services (market and nonmarket) in order to promote the sustainability of pasture-based livestock systems.

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«Migros-Wald» oder Märchenwald? (Essay)

Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen ◽

10.3188/szf.2016.0200 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 167 (4) ◽

pp. 200-204 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Oliver Thees

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Private Sector ◽

Public Goods ◽

Information Technologies ◽

Institutional Economics ◽

New Institutional Economics ◽

The Public ◽

Private And Public ◽

Points Of View ◽

Forest Enterprises

Fairytale forests must face reality (essay) Swiss forest enterprises are finding it increasingly difficult to fulfill the demands on the forest economically. The problem is complex. To address it, we analyzed this situation from the points of view of production, industrial and new institutional economics. Swiss forest enterprises are multi-product firms. They are usually publicly owned and aim to provide crucial ecosystem services for the economy in the form of private and public goods that are mostly closely connected with the production of wood. Providing these goods can be made more efficient, especially by adopting organizational measures involving cooperation and information technologies. Another more difficult but necessary measure is to ensure the required public goods are paid for. No incentives, market-like structures or tools for this have yet been introduced. This paper is a plea for providing public goods under private-sector conditions, changing management structures accordingly, even reducing the demands on the forest and developing market-based mechanisms for paying for the public goods.

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Demand-side Value for Ecosystem Services and Implications for Innovative Markets: Experimental Perspectives on the Possibility of Private Markets for Public Goods

Agricultural and Resource Economics Review ◽

10.1017/s1068280500007607 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 33-56 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Stephen K. Swallow

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Public Goods ◽

Field Tests ◽

Trade Policies ◽

Demand Side ◽

Market Incentives ◽

Private Provision ◽

On Demand ◽

Practical Implications ◽

Insight Into

Environmental economists invest in measuring the value of the environment but put less effort toward integrating that value directly into the economy. Experimental economists evaluate the performance of mechanisms to fund public goods but in some cases offer limited insight into practical implications for developing markets. This discussion presents initial insights into applying mechanisms for private provision of public goods based on demand-side values rather than regulatory-based market incentives such as cap-and-trade policies. Consideration of mechanisms to generate revenue inspires field tests that could direct experiments using threshold public goods and Lindahl's framework toward applications that transform value into revenue.

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Patriotic Values for Public Goods: Transnational Trade-Offs for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services?

BioScience ◽

10.1093/biosci/biu187 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 65 (1) ◽

pp. 33-42 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Martin Dallimer ◽

Jette Bredahl Jacobsen ◽

Thomas Hedemark Lundhede ◽

Krista Takkis ◽

Marek Giergiczny ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Public Goods ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Transnational Trade

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Inadequate Standards in the Valuation of Public Goods and Ecosystem Services: Why Economists, Environmental Scientists and Policymakers Should Care

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13010393 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 393

Author(s):

Felix Schläpfer

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Willingness To Pay ◽

Public Goods ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Environmental Policies ◽

Environmental Valuation ◽

Reporting Standards ◽

Response Options ◽

Survey Results ◽

Validity Tests

Surveys of stated willingness to pay (WTP) are increasingly used to assess the value of public goods and ecosystem services. However, the currently dominant survey protocols and practices are inadequate. This is most evident from robust findings that the valuations are heavily influenced by the response options or response scales used in the valuation questions. The widely accepted survey guidelines do not require the validity tests and reporting standards that would be needed to make the uncertainty of the results transparent. The increasing use of inadequate survey results by policymakers threatens to undermine trust in environmental valuation, environmental policies, and political institutions. The objective of this paper is to explain the relevant issues and the available alternatives in survey-based valuation to a wider audience of non-specialized economists, environmental scientists, and policymakers.

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Siderophores drive invasion dynamics in bacterial communities through their dual role as public good versus public bad

10.1101/2021.06.06.447233 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alexandre R. T. Figueiredo ◽

Oezhan Oezkaya ◽

Rolf Kuemmerli ◽

Jos Kramer

Keyword(s):

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Public Goods ◽

Public Good ◽

Bacterial Communities ◽

Invasion Success ◽

Invasion Dynamics ◽

Public Bads ◽

Invasion Assays

Microbial invasions can compromise ecosystem services and spur dysbiosis and disease in hosts. Nevertheless, the mechanisms determining invasion outcomes often remain unclear. Here, we examine the role of iron-scavenging siderophores in driving invasions of Pseudomonas aeruginosa into resident communities of environmental pseudomonads. Siderophores can be 'public goods' by delivering iron to individuals possessing matching receptors; but they can also be 'public bads' by withholding iron from competitors lacking these receptors. Accordingly, siderophores should either promote or impede invasion, depending on their dual effects on invader and resident growth. Using supernatant feeding and invasion assays, we show that invasion success indeed decreased when the invader was inhibited (public bad) rather than stimulated (public good) by the residents' siderophores. Conversely, invasion success often increased when the invader could use its siderophore to inhibit the residents. Our findings identify siderophores as a major driver of invasion dynamics in bacterial communities.

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Ecosystem Services Valuation for the Sustainable Land Use Management by Nature-Based Solution (NbS) in the Common Agricultural Policy Actions: A Case Study on the Foglia River Basin (Marche Region, Italy)

Land ◽

10.3390/land11010057 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 57

Author(s):

Elisa Morri ◽

Riccardo Santolini

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Public Goods ◽

River Basin ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Agricultural Practices ◽

Land Use Management ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Human Wellbeing

Agricultural land is a very important ecosystem that provides a range of services like food, maintenance of soil structure, and hydrological services with high ecological value to human wellbeing Ecosystem Services (ESs). Understanding the contribution of different agricultural practices to supply ESs would help inform choices about the most beneficial land use management. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are defined by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) as actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems, which address societal challenges (e.g., climate change, food and water security, or natural disasters) effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human wellbeing and biodiversity benefits. Some actions farmers can implement in the new Rural Development Programs (RDP 2021–2022 and 2023–2027) can be considered as NbS and could affect the quantity, quality, and time of some ESs related to water regulation and supply, N adsorption and erosion protection. This study aims to evaluate these ESs in different scenarios in the upper Foglia river basin (Italy) and at a local scale (farming), and to highlight the issue to compensate farmers for the production of public goods which benefit the whole society (ESs) by the implementation of RDP’s actions. These scenarios highlight how actions have positive effects on ecosystem services and their economic value related to land use management, on maintaining agricultural practices by integrating Water Frame Directive (2000/60/EC), Directive 2007/60/EC on the management of flood risks and highlighting the potential role of farmers in a high diversity landscape. This study highlights a new way to evaluate the processes of natural capital in the production of public goods, which benefits the whole society (ESs), by emphasizing the economic and environmental role of farmers in producing them and putting on the table data to trigger a PES (Payment for Ecosystem Services) mechanism. To facilitate decision making, robust decision support tools are needed, underpinned by comprehensive cost-benefit analyses and spatially modeling in which agriculture can be a strategic sector to optimize food production and environmental protection in harmony with the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy.

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