On average, Swedes are prepared to pay SEK 360 (approx $50) per person per year to protect more biological diversity in Swedish forests, according to a new report from the Norwegian Forestry Agency. Source: Timberbiz
This corresponds to an annual value of SEK 2.6–3.7 billion this is of course very difficult to value and many believe that biological diversity is priceless.
But in order for society to be able to make well-founded decisions in a situation with increasingly fierce competition for land use, we need to have values for all the benefits of the forest, says Tina Nilsson, investigator at the Swedish Forest Agency.
With a demand and price for biodiversity, there are also opportunities to develop new business models for forest owners.
A proposal that the Norwegian Forestry Agency has previously submitted in the latest in-depth evaluation of the environmental quality objective Living forests.
Biodiversity is nature’s wealth of variation, and a certain level is a prerequisite for all life. The wealth of nature is a foundation for our economy and for our physical and mental health. More than half of the world’s GDP depends on nature and its ecosystem services. In the long term, our prosperity is threatened if we do not have enough biodiversity.
A national economic explanation for the negative development of biodiversity is that its contribution to the economy is often underestimated by decision makers because it does not have an economic value that makes the benefit sufficiently visible. Therefore, the Swedish Forestry Agency has now tried to dial in the value based on previously published valuation studies of forest biological diversity in Sweden, Finland and Norway. The reviewed studies show, among other things, that:
- the annual willingness to pay of citizens to preserve biological diversity in Swedish forests through additional forest protection is an average of SEK 360 per year.
- the total annual willingness to pay to preserve biological diversity in Swedish forests through more forest protection amounts to SEK 2.6–3.7 billion per year.
“We must be able to use all the values of the forest and at the same time preserve biological diversity. That conflict of goals will be easier to describe in decision-making documents if we also know the value of biological diversity. Now we have an indication of that and thus an important knowledge base,” Ms Nilsson said.
