Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services play a crucial role for the valuation of natural capital. Typically, they are applied to smaller regions, for example a particular forest area or a certain agricultural area. For example, a tropical forest is regarded as an ecosystem that can absorb large amounts of carbon and thus make a valuable contribution to combating climate change. The average ecosystem services of a square metre of a forest area is usually higher than of an agricultural area.
Many companies evaluate ecological risks in the supply chain on the basis of concrete data. However, information about the exact location and thus also about the ecosystem is not always available. However, the country of origin is indicated in most cases, e.g. when buying food.
The GNF has therefore decided to analyse the structure of land use for individual countries and to allocate average monetary ecosystem services to them on the basis of literature references.