Trust Land Performance Assessment: Non-Market Environmental Benefits and Values | 2021

As the trustee of more than 3.5 million acres of state trust and forestlands, the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages these lands to provide income that supports rural communities, schools and universities, and other public resources. These state trust lands also produce enormous ecosystem services benefits, including recreation, carbon storage, and more.

Public servants at local, state, and federal levels who are tasked with allocating taxpayer dollars to their “highest and best use” should ground their investment decisions in the most comprehensive information available. Such a comprehensive view would incorporate the value of ecosystem services, which provide real economic benefits, though these services are rarely reflected in traditional decision-making processes.

Earth Economics worked with Washington DNR and Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics to include non-market ecosystem services benefits into DNR’s Trust Land Performance Assessment (TLPA), a comprehensive assessment of the value of trust lands.

A decision made without accounting for the non-market values generated by natural lands can lead to inefficient investments. Estimating the non-market economic value of ecosystem services in dollars allows such services to be included in decision-making processes and illuminates a given project’s costs and benefits. The results of our report demonstrate that maintaining state trust lands as working forests and agricultural lands creates value far beyond the revenue they generate.

See the entire TLPA at https://www.dnr.wa.gov/TLPA.

Suggested Citation: K. Cousins, Mojica, J., Madsen, T., Armistead, C., Fletcher, A. 2020. Trust Land Performance Assessment: Non-Market Environmental Benefits and Values. Earth Economics. Tacoma, WA.

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Photo Credit: U.S. Forest Service - Pacific Northwest Region via Flickr Creative Commons