VALUEGRASS
Background
Agriculture jointly produces both commodities and non-marketable goods and services such as carbon sequestration, flood control, biodiversity and cultural services that are not necessarily traded on markets but highly valued by society. The provision of these ecosystem services (ES) is of highest societal and policy relevance and a better understanding of the role of ecosystem services is critical for well-being, and sustainable development. One of the major methodological challenges in assessing ES provision is the integration of risks and uncertainties across different ES as well as of spatial and temporal scales to assess synergies, trade-offs and threshold effects. In recent years, a substantial research effort and policy interest on ES emerged, and the ES concept was used for diverse purposes such as raising awareness, policy analyses, regional land use planning or payments for ecosystem services. In this context, the valuation of ES is crucial because the values associated with the provision and management of ecosystems have to be considered in the decisions we make as a society. Our project focusses on grasslands, which are of highest importance for ES provision (and demand), especially in Switzerland, because they cover the majority of the agricultural production area and represent the backbone of Swiss agriculture.
Objectives
To assess and value ES as well as to understand the uncertainties underlying the valuation of ES, a strong integration of expertise from both natural sciences and economics is required. The use of these interdisciplinary approaches was, however, limited in ES studies.This project aims to contribute to fill these gaps by developing a unique and novel interdisciplinary framework that integrates economic valuation tools with natural science frameworks and observations, including ES related to plant diversity but also ecosystem biogeochemistry. Our emprical application will focus on Swiss grasslands. More specifcally, the objectives of this project are to provide an interdisciplinary framework using modern portfolio theory (MPT) to estimate the value of grassland ES in Switzerland holistically and to optimize the total value of grasslands by land-use strategies considering spatially explicit risks and uncertainties in the provision of ES. We combine meta-analysis of grassland ES and benefits with spatially explicit data sets in order to estimate and map the total value of differently managed grasslands (e.g. meadows, pastures etc.). We then define the Pareto efficient value frontier of different spatial allocations of grassland types and intensities by optimizing gross profit margins of grasslands under various constraints (land, budget, minimal thresholds). Using the distribution of all values from the meta-analysis, we perform a portfolio analysis under different risk measures and thresholds. Based on this background, we will be able to identify land-use strategies that allow the reduction of risks in ES provision with the smallest loss in expected values. Results derived from this project will be of highest relevance for the currently on-going Swiss policy debate on the prioritization of policy instruments and corresponding budget allocations.
Involved Groups:
Agricultural Economics and Policy Group & Grassland Sciences Group of ETH Zurich
Publications:
Huber, R., Le’Clec’h, S., Buchmann, N., Finger, R., 2022. Economic value of three grassland ecosystem services when managed at the regional and farm scale. Scientific Reports 12, 4194 external page >>
Huber, R., Finger, R., 2020. A Meta-analysis of the Willingness to Pay for Cultural Services from Grasslands in Europe. Journal of Agricultural Economics 71, 357-383. external page >>
Le Clec’h, S., Finger, R., Buchmann, N., Gosal, A., Hörtnagl, L., Huguenin-Elie, O., Jeanneret, P., Lüscher, A., Schneider, M.K., Huber, R. (2019). Assessment of spatial variability of multiple ecosystem services in grasslands of different intensities. Journal of Environmental Management 251, 109372 external page >>
Blog Contributions:
Evaluation de la variabilite spatiale de multiples services ecosystemiques dans des prairies gerees selon differents modes external page >>
Zahlungsbereitschaft für kulturelle Ökosystemleistungen der Graslandnutzung external page >>
Contact:
Prof. Robert Finger (), Dr. Solen Le Clec'h (), Dr. Robert Huber () and Prof. Nina Buchmann ()
Funding Period: 2017-2018
Funding: ETH Zurich Research Grants