Economic valuation of non-market forest benefits in Germany

Systematic efforts for valuing non market benefits of forests started not until the 1990s decade in Germany. Today, some 20 monetary valuation studies of environmental commodities have been undertaken in Germany about forestry issues. After a short survey of these, some empirical studies are presented which address the benefits forests yield for recreation, for the sequestration of atmospheric carbon, and finally, for the protection of biological diversity. Open research questions concern, inter alia, the relation between forest composition and quality on the one hand, and recreation values on the other; the physical amount of carbon sequestered by forests and the dependency of the respective monetary values on the institutional framework of a carbon market; and the relation between single biodiversity protection measures and their respective valuation.