ForestValue – NOBEL, Novel business models and mechanisms for the sustainable supply of and payment for forest ecosystem services

European forests provide a range of goods and services. Some are valued by existing markets (e.g., wood products) and others are considered "public goods" (e.g., carbon sequestration and other forest ecosystem services). Landowners are not rewarded for provision of forest ecosystem services (FES) by the markets. In recent years, there have been several initiatives to increase society's awareness of FES and to discuss mechanisms to pay for sustaining them. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have been identified as an important mechanism to close the gap between the demands of society and the service providers. However, a description of relevant FES is needed before PES are considered. Field-based mapping is usually time-consuming and expensive. Standard operational forest inventories for forest management planning are now almost exclusively based on remotely sensed (RS) data. In NOBEL, NMBU has been bringing techniques and knowledge from forest inventory in order to investigate which data sources are more appropriate when mapping FES. In collaboration with project partners abroad we have produced an overview of forest attributes that are registered in standard forest management inventories, and which can support the integration of FES and biological diversity into forest planning. The review identified appropriate forest attributes to quantify the opportunity for recreation, biodiversity promotion and carbon storage, and describes new criteria that future forest inventories may include. NMBU has also documented the potential of RS data to derive selected FES indicators using available RS data for different European case studies. In addition, new forest ecosystem services indicators related to the status of the ecosystems and the changes they are facing were investigated. First, a framework for a forest ecological base map was developed. Forest ecological base map layers, e.g., above ground biomass, carbon, or volume, were produced for the whole forested area in Norway by deriving relations between airborne laser scanning (ALS) and Sentinel-2 data with national field reference data. A second study assessed the potential of ALS data in combination with field reference data from National Forest Inventory to detect the presence of natural forests. The results show what variables that are important to identify natural forests, and that no significant gain is obtained from using additional data from known natural forests. A third study compared an area-based approach with a tree-based approach to detect the presence of standing dead trees using ALS data and optical data. While the area-based approach was unable to identify areas with standing dead trees, the tree-based approach showed great potential. Last, large-scale maps of forest cover change over time produced by LandTrendr (LT), a temporal segmentation algorithm, and by Global Forest Watch (GFW), were evaluated in a Norwegian boreal environment. The published results show that LT maps of changes provide efficient spatial and temporal indicators of forest change dynamics and perform better than GFW tree cover loss maps to identify and monitor clear-cuts. Based on our work, other research partners abroad have evaluated several types of business models such as direct payments to suppliers, taxes, and fees. In implementing these business models, alternative mechanisms for the payments (e.g., voluntary payments, natural capital markets) have been explored. A web-based auctioning platform (https://www.pay4ecosystem.eu/) is implemented to support the design of different business models and the analysis of trade-offs in multifunctional forest management. For the prediction and optimization of multiple sets of forest ecosystem services a framework of indicators is designed and applied by forest ecosystem models and remote sensing techniques. The costs for the provision and the societal benefits are assessed for current and future conditions by using case studies from different European regions. The comparison of the estimated price by cost- and preference-based approaches and the payments people are willing to make will allow us to draw conclusions on feasibility, effectiveness and other implications for policy making.

NOBEL har bidratt til å øke bevisstheten om ulike skogsøkosystemtjenester (FES) og har utviklet mekanismer og verktøy for å betale for å opprettholde dem. Betaling for FES er en viktig mekanisme for å koble samfunnets etterspørsel og tilbudet av slike tjenester. Feltbasert FES kartlegging er oftest tidkrevende og kostbart. I NOBEL har NMBU benyttet teknikker og kunnskap fra skogkartleggingen for dermed å undersøke hvilke datakilder som er mest hensiktsmessige ved kartlegging av FES. Sammen med utenlandske prosjektpartnere har vi laget en oversikt over skogegenskaper som registreres ved ordinær skogbruksplanlegging og som kan støtte kartlegging av FES og biologisk mangfold. Gjennomgangen identifiserer skogegenskaper som er egnet for å kvantifisere muligheten for rekreasjon, biologisk mangfold og lagring av karbon, og beskriver ny informasjon som fremtidig skogbruksplanlegging kan inneholde.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are an important mechanism to link the demands of the society with the service providers. The objectives of the project NOBEL are (i) to develop business models and mechanisms to internalise the socio-economic value of forest ecosystems, (ii) combine public policy tools with business models for implementing payments for forest ecosystem services (FES) at multiple levels, and (iii) demonstrate and compare alternative approaches for payments in case studies in Europe. NOBEL will explore the requirements for disseminating spatial information for the development of business models and innovative policies for the provision of FES. In NOBEL three types of business models will be considered; a) direct interaction between FES providers and FES beneficiaries, b) interaction between business companies and FES providers where companies pay directly to providers and pass the costs (totally or partially) to their clients, and c) interaction between government and FES providers, where the government pays providers for their services and passes the costs to consumers via taxes or fees. In implementing these business models, alternative mechanisms for the payments (e.g. voluntary payments, natural capital markets) will be explored. A web-based auctioning platform and a spatial information platform will be developed to support the design of business models for multifunctional forest management. For the prediction and optimization of multiple FES a framework of indicators will be designed and available forest ecosystem models will be applied. Management practices, stakeholder attitudes and consumer behaviour will be discussed at supra-national and regional level with policy makers, providers and beneficiaries.