Department of Ecosystem Services and Protected Areas

Staff of the Department:

	Sunduk Anatolii Mykolaiovych, Head of the Department of Ecosystem Services and Protected Areas, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow
	Kobzar Olena Mykhailivna, Senior Research Fellow, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow, Academic Secretary
	Ilina Mariia Volodymyrivna, Chief Research Fellow, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow
	Holub Oleh Anatoliiovych, Leading Research Fellow, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow
	Kolmakova Valentyna Mykolaivna, Leading Research Fellow, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow
	Sukhina Olena Mykolaivna, Senior Research Fellow, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Senior Research Fellow
	Tretiak Nataliia Antonivna, Senior Research Fellow, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Senior Researcher
	Byrkiv Halyna Mykhailivna, Leading Economist
	Hamzina Olha Mykhailivna, Leading Economist
	Denysenko Iryna Serhiivna, Leading Economist
	Kovalenko Halyna Ihorivna, Category I Technician

Main Research Areas of the Department

• improvement of the methodological foundations for assessing the condition of, and damage to, land and forest resources caused by military aggression, taking into account losses of their ecosystem services;
• research on the methodology for assessing damage to land and forest resources at the level of local communities, with identification of specific features related to local development indicators and the impact of military operations;
• identification of the specific features of ecosystem integrity disruption and the costs of ecosystem restoration in the context of providing services aimed at improving quality of life;
• development of approaches and principles for using the potential of land and forest resources within the system of the country’s post-war recovery;
• formation of methodological tools for the development of protected areas within the system of post-war reconstruction;
• improvement of the institutional foundations for using protected natural spaces as an important factor in the development of local communities;
• development of methodological and methodical approaches to assessing the social effectiveness of the use of ecosystem services in the context of sustainable development.

Scientific Results of the Department’s Activities

• the concept of ecosystem payments as an instrument for ensuring sustainable development has been developed; it provides for consideration of the structure of payments for the use of ecosystem resources and functions, methodological principles for the formation of payments for natural resources, and systemic foundations for the institutionalisation of ecosystem payments;
• methodological principles for the introduction of ecosystem payments have been formulated, including the development of differentiated ecosystem-payment schemes depending on ecosystem types and their services; the development of an algorithm for selecting optimal ecosystem-payment schemes for areas of different types; and assessment of the socio-ecological and economic effect of the instrument’s implementation for community development;
• key indicators have been developed for determining the parameters and conditions of ecosystem payments, taking into account ecosystem area, the volume of ecosystem resources, the value of services provided by the ecosystem, the costs of implementing ecosystem-restoration measures, and the amount of damage caused;
• the financial and economic foundations for regulating the sphere of nature use under decentralisation have been developed; they provide for strengthening the interaction between nature-use and economic cycles, bringing natural resources into the sphere of market influence, and enabling them to acquire the characteristics of market assets capable of generating systemic effects;
• a set of principles, postulates, and methods has been formulated for applying financial and economic regulatory instruments in the development of natural-resource potential in order to generate an integrated effect in the spatial dimension, including opportunities for community development through local accumulation and depositing of financial revenues;
• indicators have been identified and the basic characteristics of the use of regulatory instruments have been studied, including through calculation of the concentration coefficient of financial and economic regulatory activity; assessment of the system of real and potential rent indicators, investment profiles, and pathways for investment support to modernise the nature-use sphere; and assessment of the financial and economic parameters for activating the ecosystem-services instrument. The results demonstrated the need for their transformation and the introduction of new regulatory instruments capable of generating significant financial flows to budgets;
• the foundations for forming a platform of systemic interactions between natural-resource and market cycles of development have been developed. These foundations provide for expanding the functions of natural resources in a post-industrial economy with a view to integrating them into the sphere of market influence and enabling them to pass through stages within the market environment, with the possibility of changing formations and supporting the functioning of platform markets. Taking this algorithm into account, a concept has been developed for a platform of systemic interactions between natural-resource and market development cycles, with functional and sectoral levels distinguished;
• the possibilities of changing the formations of a natural resource in the process of its integration into the market environment have been studied, enabling the formation of a market for natural-resource assets and the positioning of natural resources as assets of the market economy;
• principles for the development of entrepreneurship in the field of nature use have been formulated; they define the substantive and functional framework of the process, including development principles, organisational principles, and a classification structure, thereby contributing to a holistic understanding of the research field;
• methodological foundations for the use of sustainability benchmarks for enterprises have been developed and implemented from the environment of sustainable business-model generation, including sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, the possibility of forming expanded profit and sustainable product value, systemic approaches to organising operations, and consideration of stakeholder positions. These foundations were used to assess enterprises’ compliance with sustainable orientation in the field of nature use;
• functional features of entrepreneurship development have been developed in terms of public and private capital, taking into account the sources of these forms of capital, the efficiency of their use, the circulation of finance, and the possibility of changing or adjusting enterprise policy.