North-Macedonia | Forests, grasslands and mountains, integrated ecosystem assessment, impact assessment of land cover change | Status: started July 2022
Assessing the monetary benefits ecosystem services in North-Macedonia
We take part in a larger project funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) on "Promoting Sustainable Land Management (SLM) through strengthening Legal and Institutional Framework, Capacity Building and Restoration of Most Vulnerable Mountain Landscapes Improving". Our part of the project deals with “Strengthened legal and institutional frameworks and capacity building for sustainable land management (SLM) and sustainable forest management (SFM”).
The overall objective is to conduct an integrated assessment of the monetary benefits of ecosystem services of the forest and grasslands ecosystems in the Municipalities of Jegunovce, Zhelino, Saraj, Gazi Baba, Arachinovo and Lipkovo in support of their efforts for sustainable land management, sustainable forest management and land degradation neutrality:
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Conducting an assessment of the impact of land cover changes and thereby on related ecosystem services and values provided in the past 20 years (2000 – 2022), making use of the total economic value (TEV) framework.
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Assessing and mapping of ecosystem service value changes based on scenario results, reflecting changes in societal welfare as a result of land cover change. This illustrates different future directions and the consequences of these choices).
Involved user groups and ESVD applications
In this project we aim to show the benefits of using the ecosystem services approach to take the 'full' value of grasslands and forests into account. We are specifically targeting the following user groups through the following ESVD applications:
Governments
This project aims to convince policy makers of the use of the concept of ecosystem services for sustainable land management. We do so through our an ecosystem services impact assessment of land cover change.
IMPACT ASSESSMENTS
With the ESVD, we are assessing the impact of land cover changes through the monetary valuation of land cover changes. This informs on the changes in welfare as a result of the changes in land cover. This is useful information to be used by the government for sustainably managing the land.