Swedish Environmental Protection Agency invests in research on ecosystem services

According to the national environmental objectives, the value of ecosystem services shall be integrated into all relevant community decision making.

Priorities
Projects demonstrating how the importance of biodiversity and the value of ecosystem services can be better taken into account in decision-making situations are demanded. The value of ecosystem services can be expressed both monetarily and non- monetarily.

The projects should take starting point in concrete decision situations (e.g. case studies) and clarify the understanding of ecosystem structure, function and resilience needed for making the value of ecosystem services to be developed and integrated into decision-making purposes.

The projects should result in suggestions for generalizable approaches for different types of decisions.

The projects will consider how ecosystem services should be valued in different social organizational levels and in different ecological scales (time and space).

The projects will provide a high practical applicability for decision-making at different levels and provide information on ecosystem services in a comprehensible way.

The projects are assumed to build on relevant existing knowledge and research, both nationally and internationally, in different disciplines and gain experience from e.g. EU Biodiversity Strategy, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” ( TEEB ) and “the UK National Ecosystem Assessment” (see links at the Environmental Protection Agency page on the call).

Of great importance is that the proposed research is conducted interdisciplinary and that the projects aim to integrate knowledge from different disciplines such as natural sciences, social sciences, economics, law and communications.

The projects should allocate resources for communication with other relevant projects funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. It may involve recurring annual meetings or conferences.