What is an ecosystem worth? In one sense, the value can’t be calculated. But from tourism to agriculture to water, ecosystems provide crucial resources and services that underpin the economic life of particular mountain system. My answer is limited to Hindu Kush Himalayas. As we are aware of this fact that nearly 50 percent of the world’s biodiversity hotspots and 32 percent of global protected areas lie in these mountains, and they provide economic benefits at the local, national, regional and international level. But big questions how, exactly, is this measured? How do we determine the economic value of natural resources, habitat and biodiversity? Most of them are global commons and victim /"Tragedy of common"

As population growth, climate change and globalization put pressure on mountain ecosystems, we need to understand what’s at stake for the region’s economic health when ecosystems degrade, and we need to find ways to incorporate this understanding into the national policy and planning process. Many organisation like ICIMOD is doing by developing and testing frameworks and methodologies on economic valuation of mountain ecosystems and working to integrate the knowledge gained into policy decisions.Please visit the attached link and papers. I hope you will find the answer. Apart from it, it will be also interesting to evaluate whether indigenous property right of goods like herbs, medicine or similar commodities are evaluated economically

Apart from it, it will be also interesting to evaluate whether indigenous property right of goods like herbs, medicine or similar commodities are evaluated economically justice fully or not?

Article Quantification and valuation of forest ecosystem services in...

Dear Kundan Sagar,

Thank you very much for your note and for the article, it is relevant to me. I have a further question that we can quantify the value of certain ecosystem service, forest ecosystem in your case, however, in most cases a particular ecosystem interacts with other ecosystems and ecological functions to provide multiple services.

Search the research centers near your universities, regions with mountains.

As far as my knowledge and study in the ecosystem services valuation, we must be clear on which dimension we want to study i.e. natural dimension or human dimension.

If we go for the Total Economic Valuation (TEV) approach, it will be mostly directed towards the human dimension as it is driven by welfare economic model. http://earthmind.org/files/coed/01-5-1-ValuationMethods.pdf

Natural dimension of valuation studies are often less studied and there are not particular methodologies for the study. We can conduct some case studies on that. 

Saying this, I would suggest to go for the welfare evaluation using multi-criteria analysis from the mountain ecosystem services for the mountain communities. This is place where we can enter and make difference in valuation studies of mountain ecosystem. 

In Brazil, no research has yet been carried out on this topic in Brazil. the mountain ecosystem has not inspired the interest, eventually those who have studied this subject have published it in English, in scientific journals specialized in the subject. Just search for Google Scholar, Scopus, Direct Science, etc.