Ecosystem Services - Ökonomische Analyse ihres Verlusts, ihre Bewertung und Steuerung[Ecosystem Services - Economic Analysis of their loss, their valuation and regulation]

The Knowledge Flow Paper at hand gives an overview of the economic reasons for the loss of biodiversity and eco¬system services, i.e. the public goods character and externalities. It points out that natural ecosystems have a higher economic value than currently reflected by market prices. The paper then focuses on policy instruments particularly Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) that take into account those values which are not refelected by markets. For the design of policy instruments subjective preferences of the stakeholders concerning the use of ecosystem services are an important information. In economics these preferences are typically narrowed down to a monetary value. Therefore the paper deals with the opportunities and challenges of methods for economic valuation of ecosystem services. It concludes that these methods have restrictions and that it will be impossible to come up with a precise global monetary value, because subjective preferences differ in time and from on place to another. On a smaller scale however monetary values can be generated more precise. Economic valuation is thus seen as an additional criteria in decision making besides ecological assessments and ethics.