Ecol. Econ. 70, 2503–2510 (2011)

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Ghana lost 1.9 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2005, placing it among the most rapidly deforesting regions in West Africa. Recognizing the economic value of forests could help motivate conservation efforts by local communities and agencies.

Lawrence Damnyag, of the University of Eastern Finland, and his colleagues estimated the monetary value of four ecosystem services — timber, edible fruits, soil nutrients and carbon storage — in both natural and degraded forests located in the Dormaa and Begoro districts in Ghana, during 2008.

They found that the annual timber revenues per hectare in degraded forests were around US$160 lower than in natural forests. The loss of edible fruits in Ghana's degraded forests was estimated to be worth US$777 per hectare per year. Although the researchers didn't find significant differences in the value of soil nutrients between degraded and natural forests, they estimated that in the case of carbon storage, the gross revenue loss per hectare from degraded forests was on average US$492. Added together these estimates equate to a loss of about 2.6% of the 2008 agricultural gross domestic product in Ghana.