Economic assessment of NBS: international and Russian practice

Abstract

Relevance. The concept of natural solutions has become popular due to the growing attention to the problem of climate change. Scientists and politicians are actively looking for ways to use natural solutions to solve environmental problems. Research has proven that natural climate solutions (RCC) can provide more than 30% of cost-effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2030 to stabilize global warming below 2°C. An important advantage of RCC is their economic feasibility, expressed in a lower cost compared to technological solutions for CO2 sequestration. The contribution of natural eco-systems to climate regulation has led to their active use in the formation of national climate policies. However, a complete economic assessment of the RCC is a very difficult task that needs to be solved worldwide.The purpose is to study the evolution of the formation of the constituent elements of the economic assessment of natural and climatic solutions in the context of international and Russian practice.Objectives: to substantiate the elements of the economic assessment of the RCC, to analyze methodological approaches to the assessment of the RCC, to form approaches to assessing the economic effectiveness of the implementation of the RCC.Methodology. The official documents of the UN Environment Committee, documents of the Independent Analytical Center in the field of International Sustainable Development Management Policy formation of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, reports prepared by the IPCC group were used.Results. The inclusion of the cost of ecosystem services in the assessment of the RCC is justified, the advantages and disadvantages of the main methodological approaches to the assessment of the RCC are identified, key approaches to assessing the economic effectiveness of the implementation of the RCC are formed: internal, external and general.Conclusions. The principles and methods of natural-economic and ecosystem accounting form the basis of the economic assessment of the RCC. A comprehensive economic assessment reflects the monetary contribution of the ecosystem to sustainable development by evaluating ecosystem assets involved in the implementation of the RCC and the ecosystem services they produce, which contributes to increasing the adaptability of socio-economic systems to environmental shocks.