KU contributes to international publication on payment schemes for benefits provided by ecosystems

For the past 6 years, KU has supported and hosted the international project for scientific networking in land-change science, the Global Land Project. A publication in the journal Science this month is the latest result of the project.

This month, the international scientific journal Science brings an article that results from a group discussion at last year’s conference ”Land Systems, Global Change and Sustainability”. The conference was held in the USA and organised by the Global Land Project (GLP) that is almost exclusively supported by the University of Copenhagen and has its secretariat at the Department of Geography and Geology.

At the conference, world leading scientists within various disciplines, from environmental economics to geography, got engaged in discussing the development of Payment schemes for Ecosystem Services (PES), i.e. payment schemes for benefits that natural ecosystems provide for humans, such as clean air and drinking water. One of the best known examples is for instance when countries are paid in order not to cut down their forests and thus contribute to reducing carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity.

The researchers are from Arizona State University, University of Alaska and University of Minnesota. In the article they stress that there are a number of pitfalls within current payment schemes that could lead to more damage than improvement of the environment. The article includes specific recommendations for how to plan this kind of schemes. For instance, it is suggested that governments need to generate measures that allow for integrating indicators of the state of ecosystems into national income and products accounts.

The recommendations come at a time with increasing focus at global level on PES schemes. The article is a good example of the valuable results that long-term investment in international scientific networking and cooperation can contribute to.

You can read more in the international press release. If you have access to Science, you can read the article here.