11.02.2022 the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine invited to a round table on “Ways of developing public policy on conservation and evaluation of ecosystem services in Ukraine”. In his opening vice minister Shachmatenko underlined, that forests emit oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, bogs bind carbon, marine and other natural areas positively affect the climate, yields and human health. Thus, ecosystem services are of outstanding importance with regard to sustainable development of Ukraine. Shachmatenko drew attention to increasing influence by harmful human interventions. He formulated the objective, to assess and preserve ecosystem services provided by nature based on a robust methodology and corresponding state regulations.
Accordingly, MENR presented a conceptional approach about legislation on ecosystem services in terms of economic evaluation and financing mechanism. Another presentation by Wolodymyr Domаshlinets, Department of Biodiversity Protection of MENR, referred among others on the study “Development of scientific and methodological principles for the assessment of ecosystem services taking into account the need to implement international environmental agreements”, elaborated by the National University of Forestry of Ukraine in 2019. During the intense discussion state representatives and scientist expressed their views on the assessment and monetarization of ecosystem services and described their potential contributions.
Volker Sasse, expert of the project Technical Support to Forest Policy Development and National Forest Inventory Implementation (SFI), referred to German experiences in evaluation forest ecosystem services, whereas regulations on financial compensation are still in a conceptional phase there as well. Sasse also mentioned the running National Forest Inventory in Ukraine, supported by the SFI project, and drew attention to potential synergies with regard to the methodology for economic evaluation forest ecosystem services. Sasse offered to provide German experiences in more details, if desired by the Ukrainian partners.
