LANDWELL: Climate-induced welfare impacts of ecosystem goods and services from agricultural and seminatural landscapes in Norway

These landscapes and resources are also important for other sectors such as tourism, recreation and food industries and contribute to good living conditions and quality of life, especially in rural areas. Little is still known about both how climate change will affect the agricultural sector’s ability to provide EG&S from cultural and seminatural landscapes, and the overall welfare consequences of these impacts for people and for associated industries. This project aims to fill this gap. We propose a broad, interdisciplinary project, coupling social science (environmental and agricultural economics, rural sociology) with natural sciences (climatology, biology, agronomy, landscape ecology, physical geography). Our approach aims first to utilise and operationalise available research and data on physical climate change impacts on the agricultural sector and derive indicators of change of EG&S. This will form the basis for an ambitious and innovative investigation into methods and applications to reliably assess welfare impacts of projected climate change, estimating both monetary and non-monetary indicators of value on multiple geographical scales in Norway.