Biodiversity loss is a serious global environmental problem. Economic instruments in biodiversity policies can contribute towards reconciling the conservation costs encountered at local level with the benefits of biodiversity conservation at higher levels of governance, from regional and...

We study the incorporation of ecosystem services in German water infrastructure planning exemplified by a projected deepening of the Lower Weser river channel. Therefore, we recalculate the project's benefit-cost ratio by integrating the monetary value of changes in different ecosystem services:...

From a theoretical point of view, result-based agri-environmental payments are clearly preferable to action-based payments. However, they suffer from two major practical disadvantages: costs of measuring the results and payment uncertainty for the participating farmers. In this paper, we propose...

This report constitutes the main deliverable of WorkPackage 2 of GoverNat, "Assessing multilevel activities in water and biodiversity governance", dealing with an assessment of state-ofthe- art European water and biodiversity governance, based on the analysis of a series of casestudies developed...

A region of ecological importance which generates uncompensated cross-territorial positive spillovers has a comparatively higher fiscal need due to the direct and indirect costs it incurs for nature conservation. In order adequately to acknowledge fiscal needs relating to nature conservation, we...

Local conservation efforts are often related to benefits at higher governmental levels. On the one hand, these efforts are strongly connected to local land-use decisions. On the other hand, activities such as sustainable water management or biodiversity conservation are associated with regional,...

Regions often consist of both urban, densely populated areas and rural, more remote areas. In contrast to the acknowledged socio-economic functions of urban agglomerations, rural and remote areas usually provide ecological services for society as a whole. A number of these ecological services...

The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of ecological-economic incentives in conservation policy. Our approach uses strategies for establishing habitat networks as an example to develop spatially-oriented incentives in urban landscapes. The incentives should ideally consider...

Successful public conservation policies at various governmental levels have increased some populations of protected species to the extent that they are causing damage to human activities. As a reaction public authorities are developing biodiversity reconciliation policies. Finland and Germany...