Abstract
The ecosystem services (ES) concept can provide holistic understanding of the nature-society interactions and possibly as a reason of this is making its way into mainstream environmental policy on various levels. Protected areas (PA) are increasingly under pressure from human activities (competition over land use) and global climate change.
Climate change effects such as changes in species composition, extreme events such as increased temperature and droughts can influence important ecosystem services in PAs. Therefore, there is a need for strong policy and guidance to decision-making in both designation and management of PAs.
Effective decision-making and governance of PAs requires relevant information on values of ES affected by global change. Adaptation to climate change has been suggested as a necessary response option but the total benefits and costs are largely unknown.
In order to successfully adapt protected areas to climate change it might be important to realize their social importance, e.g. in a form of economic valuation. We illustrate the economic assessment of ecosystem services provided by ecosystems and habitats in 25 Protected Landscape Areas (PLAs) in the Czech Republic.
The total value of ecosystem services in all 25 PLAs reached EUR51 billion/year, with the surface area significantly influencing the total average value of a particular PLA. When transformed to value per unit area, the values varied from EUR1.2 to EUR6.5 million/km2/year.
The results suggest a dominant role of forest ecosystems in the composition of the economic value provided by ecosystem services in the Central-European PLAs. Estimates of economic benefits provided by PAs can be applied in the evaluation of investments and large-scale adaptation projects.
They can serve as a basis for further assessment of the role of PAs in climate change adaptation and mitigation and other values provided to society in a changing environment.