The Economics of Forest Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity

Dear Colleagues,

Forests provide multiple provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting ecosystem services to humans: They deliver wood and food, store carbon, regulate the water cycle, protect against natural hazards, offer opportunities for recreation, and are important areas of biodiversity. Many of these services are local or regional, but some of them are also of global importance—as, for example, the carbon forests store of the Amazon basin. Following the international TEEB study, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity”, the diverse ecosystem services which forests provide have to be recognized, valued, and effectively integrated in private and public decision making. For those ecosystem services that are public goods and therefore particularly prone to loss, this requires the development of adequate policy instruments and governance mechanisms. While typical patterns and direct drivers of deforestation are well established, there are still significant gaps in understanding how underlying economic drivers shape the dynamics of forest loss and degradation in a world marked by rapidly globalizing natural resource value chains. This holds particularly for global and climate change drivers and for forests in the Global South.

This Special Issue on “The Economics of Forest Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity” addresses this theme in three perspectives. First, it explores how direct and proximate economic factors—and their interplay with other drivers of global change—catalyze forest degradation and deforestation. Second, it contributes to our knowledge about valuing forest ecosystem services and biodiversity from different valuation perspectives and incorporating these into decision making. Third, it examines the potential of different types of forest values to inform efforts to reverse forest loss. These comprise, for example, more differentiated property rights regimes, novel regulatory instruments, economic incentives, governance mechanisms, and agroforestry approaches. A special focus is on economic perspectives, but other methodological approaches that pursue recognition and integration of forest ecosystem services are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hansjürgens
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.