Economic Evaluation of Specially Protected Natural Areas of Kamchatka

In recent decades, there has been a significant change in approaches to the management of protected areas. In fact, a fundamentally new paradigm of protected areas is developing. It is based on the notion of protected areas as providers of various benefits beyond their own borders. Thus, protected areas cease to be perceived in society as isolated from the outside world islands of ecological well-being, as "goods-in-themselves"; they are transformed in the public consciousness into "goods for us", as fulfilling the most important and irreplaceable functions of maintaining the most scarce goods and services of natural origin. These fundamental provisions should be used as a basis for scientific and practical activities to improve the management of PAs. Moreover, the ongoing administrative reform contributes to changes in the management of PAs towards their integration into socio-economic processes in the territory: improving the efficiency of budgetary expenditures, as well as increasing the accessibility and quality of ecosystem services provided by protected areas to citizens and legal entities.

We carried out research on the environmental and economic assessment of the ecosystem services on the pilot site - the Bystrinsky Nature Park as foundations for biodiversity conservation, in order to implement new approaches to biodiversity conservation, spread the positive international experience, strengthen the management system of protected areas for sustainable biodiversity conservation in various socio-economic conditions. In the course of this work, based on the results of the economic assessment of natural resources and ecosystem services of the Bystrinsky Nature Park, the amount of income gained from the use of the park's natural resources by various users, comparing the income with the costs of maintaining natural resource complexes, we have prepared the proposals for the development of the natural park "Bystrinsky", which are significant for improving the management of the PAs in Kamchatka.

The project implementation included the development of the theoretical foundations of the economic assessment of PAs as the basis for biodiversity conservation: defining the scope of economic assessments of resources and ecosystem services; presenting the approaches to the decision-making on biodiversity conservation based on results of the economic evaluation of the park's natural resources and ecosystem services; specifying the institutional features and problems of economic assessments of natural resources and ecosystem services at protected areas; obtaining practical results of economic evaluation of natural resources of the "Bystrinsky" park. More information on the topic can be found in the monograph "Economic Assessment of Kamchatka's Specially Protected Natural Territories: Practical Results and Their Importance for Biodiversity Conservation (by Example of the Natural Park “Bystrinsky”).