Ecosystems’ economic assessment in the context of different climatic zones

¹ Ural State Mining University, 620144, 30, Kuibyshev st., Ekaterinburg, Russia

Abstract

The failure of the key approach to assessing the value of natural goods, based only on the assessment of providing value, provoked the emergence of the ecosystem services’ theory. In addition to providing services of nature this theory includes supporting, regulating and social or cultural services. This approach provoked further adjustment of the state regulation system in the way of developing the market of ecosystem services, considering the full range of services provided by nature to society, for the organization of a transparent mechanism for the use of natural resources and ecosystem services. However, to date, in the Russian Federation this approach has not received legislation support, but the academic community is actively working on this aspect and even suggests adding the value of ecosystem services in the methodology for assessing the national wealth. The economic assessment of real and potential damages from ecosystems’ degradation using the theory of ecosystem services becomes extremely important for the development of an algorithm for optimal natural resource management at various levels of state regulation. The results of the study are the identified boundaries of economic assessment of the value of ecosystems (soil and forest) in the context of 1) valuation methods and 2) climatic zones in order to identify the most valuable ecosystems for simplifying the processes of natural resource management.