Workshop I – Bad Goisern Austria

Objectives of stakeholder involvement

NOBEL will facilitate the multi-actor involvement of stakeholders at regional levels to discuss the design and evaluate the effects of business models for Forest Ecosystem Service (FES) provisioning. Three main activities have been listed: to compare management practices and stakeholder attitudes towards FES; support communication between primary stakeholder groups (policy makers, FES providers, and beneficiaries); and disseminate project results to the primary stakeholder groups.

Credit: ÖBf-Archiv/Wolfgang Simlinger & Franz Pritz

First stakeholder meeting

The NOBEL team members in Austria met with the stakeholders on the 23rd July 2019 at Bad Goisern to collect the local experiences on FES in the region from the stakeholder perspective. The following questions supported the process of information gathering:

  1. What FES are the most important in the region?
  2. Which FES are supplied insufficiently today according to social demand and why?
  3. Which FES could potentially contribute to forest owners income?
  4. For which services are there a potential for development of new markets?

The meeting allowed to get an overview about the existing experiences with the implementation of different business models for ecosystem services, identify potential legal options and barriers for implementing business models of ecosystem services in the region, identify relevant business partners and to give feed-back on the relevance and appropriateness of the project.

Several valuation approaches, business models and mechanisms were discussed during the workshop. The following business models could be implemented:

  • BM 1 – Value-added goods and services: Private households or companies that offer products and services directly (e.g. ecotourism, certified wood products)
  • BM 2 – Voluntary PES: Voluntary payments from private households or companies (pass on costs to customers – “Blühendes Österreich”)
  • BM 3 – Selling FES to Government Agencies: Government Pays Ecosystem Service Providers for Service and Passes Costs to Consumers (Taxes, Fees, …)
  • BM 4 – Business as usual: Ecosystem service providers sell wood and non-wood products on the market

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