Valuation of Land-Use/Land-Cover-Based Ecosystem Services in Afghanistan—An Assessment of the Past and Future

Being one of the weakest economies in world, livelihoods Afghanistan remain highly dependent on local ecosystem services. However, risk services degradation over past two decades has significantly increased, mainly due to rapid changes land-use and land-cover (LULC). As such, policy makers must be able estimate impact LULC various By utilizing GlobeLand30 land cover products for 2000, 2010 2020, by adopting value transfer method, this study assessed (ESV) response Afghanistan. Additionally, dynamics system (DLS) model was innovatively coupled with linear programming predict likely scenarios ESV 2030. The predicted results were also validated against actual achieved a Kappa 0.78. showed that 20-year period, ecologically important categories such as forest, water bodies grassland severely unstable rapidly decreasing scope. These types being threatened agricultural, built-up unused lands. During we estimated decrease total from 161 billion USD 2000 152.27 2020. About 92% shared supporting provisioning simulated will further under Business-As-Usual (BAU), Rapid Economic Development (RED) scenarios. Positively, an Environmental Protection (ENP) scenario is predicted, 4.5% increase achieving requires enforcement strict environmental protection measures.