Certification of forest ecosystem services: concept, development, and application

Although forests provide various ecosystem services that support human welfare, forest ecosystems have undergone continuous degradation. To mitigate forest loss from illegal logging, forest certification was launched in the early-1990s, and the interest in certification has been expanding in scope from timber to a range of ecosystem services for a complete approach to sustainable forest management. This thesis defines such a certification scheme as the certification of forest ecosystem services (CFES). In the first part, I propose a conceptual framework for CFES and argue that a key function of the certification system is to disclose information on the provision of ecosystem services to the market. This function distinguishes CFES from forest certification and may support improvements of market-based policy instruments for ecosystem services (Chapter 2). The second part examines the possible development of CFES as an expansion of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system, and analyzes the key FSC stakeholders, including certification bodies, enabling partners, and certificate holders. Their adaptability to ecosystem services was relatively high for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and non-timber forest products (Chapter 3). The adaptability also indicated that watershed and soil conservation services could be bundled to reduce the costs of certifying each service (Chapter 4). The FSC certificate holders preferred CFES that offers a price premium, technical training for forest owners, and/or access to global service markets, but their willingness to pay was low (Chapter 5). The third part focuses on applying CFES to a payment for watershed services in West Lombok, Indonesia. Service buyers, sellers, and intermediaries perceived certification as a potential tool to improve watershed management (Chapter 6). Buyers demanded certified services that disclose water quality, flood risk, and/or environmental and social forest safeguards (Chapter 7).Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat

Using mobile phone data to examine weather impacts on recreational ecosystem services in an urban protected area

10.1038/s41598-021-85185-7Scientific Reports111554

Can ecosystem services certification enhance brand competitiveness of certified products?

Many ecolabels support sustainable production and consumption related to ecosystem services and could be used as a basis to develop ecosystem services certification. To generate a price premium and attract buy-in from producers, such a certification would need to boost the brand equity of the certified product above the competition. This study tests the feasibility of such an effect by analyzing the brand equity of certified bottled water using a choice experiment with 529 households in Lombok, Indonesia. Our results revealed enhanced brand equity of certified bottles, indicating an impact of ecolabel logos used to represent certification. However, the enhancement neither exceeded brand equity of competing brands of bottled water, nor reflected different values associated with the ecolabel logos. These results imply challenges for certification uptake in a competitive market, a need for branding and marketing of certification, and the importance of brand-competitiveness analysis in price premium studies