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National parks have many fondions. They serve as nature reserves and, at the same time, they provide excellent recreation opportunities for millions of people worldwide. However, from the viewpoint of the regional local population they can also frequently restrict individual activities. For this reason, the issue of the economic potential of a national park for the relevant region is usually brought up very quickly. High expectations are frequently placed on the benefits from national park tourism. Surprisingly, there is a lack — at least for the Alpine region — of comprehensive studies of the importance of national park tourism for regional economies. The present publication aims to address and reduce this information deficit. Extensive visitor surveys carried out in and around the Swiss National Park in the summer of 1998 revealed that national park tourists booking accommodation in this region of 16 communities generated demand to the value of SFr 20.6 million. SFr 10.2 million of this amount was gross value added. This is the lower limit of the value added from national park tourism in the study area, and represents 2.5% of the regional CDP. Indirect and induced regional economic effects from national park tourism are also taken into account and based on key parameters provided by the relevant literature. In this way, the upper limit of value added by national park tourism can be estimated to be approximately SFr 17.4 million or 4.25% of the regional CDP. On the other hand, the comparative economic impact of national park day tourism can be considered very small. National park tourism contributes about one quarter of the total estimated value added of the region's summer tourism. This means that the National Park can be considered to be a major attraction for summer tourism in the surrounding region. However, the surveys also revealed that visitors to the National Park region appreciate the variety of activities offered, indicating that a national park on its own would likely be insufficient to promote a region's tourism or economy.

National parks are trademarks for unspoilt landscape and authentic nature experience, a quality which is one of the most important competition factors in tourism and which does comply with today's most popular trends in tourism. But up to now the surrounding tourism regions do not use the attraction value of German national parks for their destination marketing. In 2002, the UN‐Year of Ecotourism and the national tourism campain for Germany's natural heritage, made the tourism sector aware of national parks. The situation analysis carried out in German national park regions revealed, that national parks in traditional destinations only play a secondary role, while they are paramount idea for marketing in underdeveloped regions with still modest tourist infrastructure. On the other hand there are medium or even higher developed destinations where national parks are playing a quite dominant role in tourism. The different types of national park regions require different strategies of destination management. As one strategy a corporate identity and policy for creating and establishing a touristic brand “German National Parks” is proposed.

The requirement of full cost recovery for water services including environmental and resource costs in accordance with the polluter pays principle in Art. 9 EU-Water Framework Directive is a unique provision in the history of the European environmental law. The wording of the provision is a compromise between the Council's and the Parliament's versions that mirrors different conceptual ideas on how to internalize environmental and resource costs. Art. 9 now contains a two-step concept for the achievement of the aim. The uniform implementation of the full cost-recovery calls for common accounting standards for the calculation of financial cost and a common methodology for the estimation of environmental and resource costs on the European level. In Germany, the requirements of the first step are partly fulfilled, but necessities of the second step are not being met at the moment.