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COPI aims at providing the European Commission with an assessment of the costs of policy inaction at the global scale with regard to the 2010 biodiversity target. The costs of policy inaction refer to the environmental impacts caused by biodiversity loss, including economic and social impacts on human wellbeing. The study analyses the expected changes in biodiversity levels and in the associated ecosystem services. Final results are presented in terms of monetary and non-monetary costs and risks, taking into account the geographical, social and economic distributions of the impacts.

COPI aims at estimating the environmental damage occurring in the absence of additional policy and in case of failure to correct misguided policies in other areas. The objective is to assess the losses in biodiversity if no action is taken, focusing on marginal analysis, in order to highlight the need for specific policy instruments.

The main objectives of the study are:

  • to develop projections of changes in ecosystem services based on changes in land use and biodiversity in different biomes and world regions over the period 2000-2050;
  • to develop a database of values to be applied to the changes in ecosystem services;
  • to develop a spreadsheet model allowing for different combination of values and land use changes;
  • to match the analysis of benefits and losses across biomes.

FEEM has been involved in the economic valuation of forest ecosystem services, in order to develop a methodological approach and provide a monetary assessment of a selected set of relevant forest services: provisioning, regulating (carbon sequestration) and cultural services (recreation and passive use) associated with different forest biomes in different world regions.

The project is co-ordinated by ALTERRA (Dr. Leon Braat).