The Economics of Wilderness Overcoming Challenges, Seizing Opportunities in Europe

Abstract: Wilderness protection is a relatively new concept in Europe. Nonetheless, there have recently been several policy successes with respect to the protection of Europe’s last remaining wilderness areas and the promotion of the restoration of wilderness attributes in other areas. Ecosystem services analysis and valuation are progressively becoming important for protected area management, promotion, and expansion worldwide. In addition to their intrinsic spiritual, landscape, and biodiversity values, wilderness areas can offer several sustainable economic, social, cultural, and environmental benefits to local European communities, landholders, some business activities, cities, and society in general. However, despite the progress recently made in understanding the values of ecosystem services in a range of contexts, there are relatively few studies providing a comprehensive analysis of the bundle of ecosystem services generated by European protected areas. Houdet and Kun (2012) recently provided a better understanding of the economic benefits and costs of European wilderness areas to European stakeholders. Indeed, although TEEB (2010) reports have successfully mainstreamed concepts such as the economic values of nature and pay-ments for ecosystem services (PES) to support effective protected area (PA) management, tangible mechanisms and tools are needed by PA managers to help them engage with stakeholders t