Are silvicultural subsidies an effective payment for ecosystem services in Slovakia?

The Slovak government sought a solution to motivate forest owners to improve silvicultural measures and use close-to-nature forest management because it believes it would support all forest ecosystem services. For this reason, a new economic instrument, Forestry Support for Fulfilling Non-productive Forest Functions (FSfNPFF), has been recently implemented. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the economic instrument. We used a multicriteria programme evaluation method to (i) analyse this national subsidy for silvicultural measures and close-to-nature forestry as payments for ecosystem services, (ii) evaluate the potential effectiveness of the subsidy and (iii) evaluate the implementation effectiveness in achieving both ecological and policy goals. Characteristics of the FSfNPFF programme partly overlap with the theory of payments for ecosystem services, which concludes that it could be an input-oriented payment or other incentives for ecosystem services. However, as our results revealed, relevant implementation gaps occurred that reduced the overall effectiveness of the FSfNPFF programme, and there is no evidence of how these subsidies support ecosystem services in terms of their quantification.

Automated summary

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the recently implemented Forestry Support for Fulfilling Non-productive Forest Functions (FSfNPFF) program in Slovakia. The findings reveal implementation gaps and lack of evidence to quantify the support of ecosystem services.