Valuation of Cultural and Environmental Goods for Integrated Assessment and Decision-making: From Promise to Practice

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

VALUECHANGE

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2018

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

1,183,134 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Urbanisation in Norway increases the pressure on the remaining cultural and environmental goods, and this may in turn change the social values of these goods. This will have consequences for the choice of political solutions concerning the use and the users of such goods along the urban rural gradient. VALUECHANGE is an interdisciplinary project aimed at assessing, valuing and integrating the importance of cultural and environmental goods in decision making. The project is especially focused on cultural ecosystem services, including biodiversity, cultural landscapes and cultural heritage in a broad sense and the importance of these for society. The project aims to improve the knowledge about the importance of cultural and environmental goods for urban and rural communities, so that this knowledge in turn can be used in decision making, including cost benefit analysis, impact assessments and physical planning, where it is necessary with informed and integrated decision making. We will conduct national valuation studies and local case studies. The aim of the valuation studies is to improve the knowledge about the non-monetary and monetary values of environmental and cultural goods, the trade-offs that are made between different goods, and the opinions people have concerning the use and the users of these goods. The project will investigate changes in these trade-offs in time and space; with urbanisation in the landscape on the urban-rural gradient. The project will also study how changes in the values that people place on cultural and environmental goods can contribute to the value creation potential associated with these goods. The project is implemented by a core team from Statistics Norway, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Norwegian Institute for Bioeconomy Research and Menon Centre for Environmental and Resource Economics (MERE) supported by an international expert panel and a Norwegian user group. VC has mapped area efficiency and reallocation of areas in Norwegian communities and the result has been journal article submitted to Kart og plan and an op ed in Kommunal rapport, discussing the potential for reusing areas to improve efficient land use (A (= Activity) 1.1). VC has contributed to a report that categorizes various natural areas in Norway based on available map-based data (A1.1, 4.3). Furthermore, VC has contributed to a journal article (revised in Environmental and Resource Economics (EARE)) and an MA thesis that both address the validity of non-market valuation methods (A2.1, 2.2). VC has contributed to an article on the method and protocol for value transfer published in EARE (A2.3). VC has published two popular science articles on measuring quality of life and two journal articles on quality of life in cities are for revision (Cities and Regional Studies) (A2.2). An MA thesis explored how perceived quality of life affects the valuation of environmental goods (A 2.2, 2.3). VC has contributed to an article on preferences for cultural landscapes in Landscape Research (Level 2). Furthermore, the draft journal article with a Q-study on society's management of physical cultural heritage is nearing completion (A2.2). VC has conducted a survey on vacation home construction in the Norefjell area. The survey maps the preferences of the local community, vacation home users and non-users from the larger cities nearby (A3.1) as well as local value creation from vacation home tourism (A 3.3). VC PhD-fellow Iversen now has data for the 3rd and 4th PhD article. VC also analyses how the natural environment, the residency requirement and other factors affect the market value of vacation homes and residential homes (A 3.2). VC has contributed to the analysis of value creation from eagle tourism (A 3.3). A cost-benefit analysis of climate forest planting has been published in Land Use Policy, and VC has contributed to a cost-benefit analysis (SSB report) of how the value of coastal heaths change as a result of abandonment for grazing and climate change (A 4.2). The project has contributed to the analysis of municipalities' impact assessment of environmental issues (A 4.3) and an article on the UN's SEEA EA using economic valuation methods (A 4.3). VC arranged an international expert workshop (Lillehammer 21-23 January 2020) and a professional seminar for users and other guests from the administration on 30 October 2021. The project has a website on Statistics Norway, a Facebook page and has produced four newsletters.