The social benefits and costs of preserving forest biodiversity and ecosystem services

Ecologists recommend preserving more of the old-growth forests in Norway, as half of the species have forests as their main habitat and many are in decline. We investigate benefits and costs over a 50-year period of increasing forest conservation from 1.4% of the productive forest area (the situation in 2007) to 2.8% (doubling), 4.5% ('ecologists' minimum') and 10% (one goal suggested in public debate). The benefits are estimated based on a national contingent valuation (CV) survey of Norwegian households. Two independent measures of total costs are used: (1) the actual compensation amounts paid to forest owners and (2) results from a survey of forest owners' minimum willingness to accept compensation to preserve. Results show that social benefits outweigh costs of the three conservation plans by a large margin. The middle option of 4.5% has the highest net present value. This result is robust to a range of assumptions, including considerations of potential hypothetical bias in willingness to pay estimates. The results of this cost-benefit analysis reflect the preferences of the general population, the authorities and the forest owners with respect to biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation, and supplement the expert opinion of ecologists.