Valuing the environmental services of trees in the landscape: an introduction
Valuing the environmental services of trees in the landscape: an introduction
wca2014-1479 Meine Van Noordwijk 1,*Beria Leimona 2,Terry Sunderland 3,Florence Bernard 4 1World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Bogor, Indonesia, 2SE Asia, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), 3Headquarters, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia, 4ASB Global Coordination Office, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, KenyaThe word “value” can be used in financial terms but also in the broader meaning of respect and willingness to act in support of. Trees inside and outside forests provide goods and services that are important to the livelihoods, welfare and wellbeing of people inside and outside of the landscape. However, decisions to cut, plant or otherwise manage trees tend to be dominated by the direct benefits that the ‘owner’ or claimant of the resource expects. Most of the environmental services provided by trees, such as regulation of micro- and mesoclimate, and roles in soil, water and biodiversity conservation, remain externalities to the decision maker. Various approaches exist to internalize such externalities and ensure that ‘commons’ are respected. Some of these approaches rely on valuation in economic terms, to allow direct equivalence to traded goods that can be extracted from the landscape, with or without forest and/or trees. Expressions of the economic value can be aggregated to inform estimates of changes in natural capital at national scale in assessments of green growth. Other studies have been designed to derive the opportunity costs to land owners of not removing trees and forests as basis for compensation, and/or for design of co-investment programs that support enhancement of environmental services. We will review what it takes to get agroforestry recognized in current green accounting systems