Salzau 2010 Abstracts February 2010
From a comprehensive economic perspective, decisions on conservation or development projects should be informed by a detailed account of costs and of benefits of all relevant planning options. Within welfare economics, it is undisputed that indirect ecological effects (indirect use services) as well as effects on ethically relevant, non-use components of the total economic value have to be taken into account. From a neoclassical economics perspective, ecosystem functions need to be converted into ecosystem services, i.e. human benefits, in order to be a proper object of economic valuation. While theoretically consistent, the mainstreaming of such an ecosystem service economics approach is faced with a number of problems. These problems refer (i) to pragmatic issues in the actual scientific and economic quantification of the ecosystem services, (ii) to an unclarified relation of the entire ecosystem services concept with respect to the conceptual tools of the different spatial and environmental planning traditions in several countries including Germany, and (iii) in the wide range of roles which may be assigned to cost-benefit analyses in environmental and conservation planning.
In order to discuss the opportunities as well as current and/or future limitations to a wider acceptance of ecosystem service approaches in general as well as their use in economic valuation, NetzwerkForum (NeFo), a project of the German DIVERSITAS International branch, will conduct two workshops. The first workshop will be held in November 2010, and focus on the discussion of the scientific fundamentals of the approach. The second workshop is planned for spring 2011, and will highlight interesting case studies and "best practice" applications in order to contribute to a mainstreaming of ecosystem service approaches in environmental valuation and planning. Via the PR capacity of NeFo, scientific as well as executive summaries of the workshops will be disseminated. While the results aim most directly at influencing German planning practice, international contributions are encouraged.
We will be seeking endorsement from The Ecosystem Services Partnership for the workshops, and co-ordinate with the organizers of the Salzau ESP conferences.