Valuing Ecosystem Services from Forests: A Multidisplinary Field-Based Approach

Land-use regimes vary throughout the world. Within the forest land-use regime there are several broad management strategies. Diverse views are prevalent about the superiority of one forest management strategy over the others, especially in relation to net benefits. These debates about net benefit cannot be solved from the current body of literature as they are mostly concluded by summing market values. Non-market values are usually not taken into account mainly because of the uncertainty of methodology and the difficulty in estimating those values. Consequently, total goods and services from forests are undervalued and their contribution to the national output has been grossly underestimated. As a result, land use decisions are generally biased in favour of land-use options other than forests. This paper analysed major issues on valuation of community forestry, an important forest management strategy in developing countries, and then developed methods for estimating net carbon sequestration amount, option value of biodiversity and onsite soil protection value of community forests after its handover to the designated communities.