Assessing trade-offs between food production, biodiversity and carbon sequestration for Eastern Europe
Understanding the trade-offs between food production, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services has become increasingly important for local, national and global policy making. This paper contributes to this understanding by developing and demonstrating a method by which the spatially explicit opportunity costs of several jointly produced ecosystem services can be estimated.
The method is based on a two-stage frontier approach using parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques. The approach is implemented with ecosystem services data for 18 Central and Eastern European countries.
Results show that opportunity costs of changes in biodiversity and carbon sequestration differ substantially between regions. Those areas having already relatively high levels of carbon sequestration have a comparative advantage in sequestering more carbon. Opportunity costs of biodiversity generally increase with increasing biodiversity up to a turning point after which they decrease. We argue that the method and resulting opportunity costs can lead to more integrated and rigorous policy support and dialogue.
15th Annual BIOECON Conference Conservation and Development: Exploring Conflicts and Challenges
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Specifications
- Publication title
- Assessing trade-offs between food production, biodiversity and carbon sequestration for Eastern Europe
- Publication date
- 18 September 2013
- Publication type
- Publication
- Product number
- 1553