Marion Potschin

Ecosystem Ecology: The links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being

The degradation of ecosystem services poses a significant barrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the MDG targets for 2015. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, p. 18 Introduction: managing ecosystems for people No matter who we are, or where we live, our well-being depends on the way ecosystems work. Most obviously, ecosystems can provide us with material things that are essential for our daily lives, such as food, wood, wool and medicines. Although the other types of benefit we get from ecosystems are easily overlooked, they also play an important role in regulating the environments in which we live. They can help ensure the flow of clean water and protect us from flooding or other hazards like soil erosion, land-slips and tsunamis. They can contribute to our spiritual well-being, through their cultural or religious significance or the opportunities they provide for recreation and the enjoyment of nature. In this chapter, we will look at the goods and services that ecosystems can provide and the role that biodiversity may play in producing them, specifically the contribution that biodiversity makes to peoples livelihoods, to their security and to their health. In other words, we will concentrate mainly on the utilitarian value of biodiversity. We will also explore how these ideas link up with those of the Ecosystem Approach to environmental management and policy, and some of the implications of this for how sustainable development is defined.

Ecosystem services: Exploring a geographical perspective

The ‘ecosystem service’ debate has taken on many features of a classic Kuhnian paradigm. It challenges conventional wisdoms about conservation and the value of nature, and is driven as much by political agendas as scientific ones. In this paper we review some current and emerging issues arising in relation to the analysis and assessment of ecosystem services, and in particular emphasize the need for physical geographers to find new ways of characterizing the structure and dynamics of service providing units. If robust and relevant valuations are to be made of the contribution that natural capital makes to human well-being, then we need a deeper understanding of the way in which the drivers of change impact on the marginal outputs of ecosystem services. A better understanding of the trade-offs that need to be considered when dealing with multifunctional ecosystems is also required. Future developments must include methods for describing and tracking the stocks and flows that characterize natural capital. This will support valuation of the benefits estimation of the level of reinvestment that society must make in this natural capital base if it is to be sustained. We argue that if the ecosystem service concept is to be used seriously as a framework for policy and management then the biophysical sciences generally, and physical geography in particular, must go beyond the uncritical ‘puzzle solving’ that characterizes recent work. A geographical perspective can provide important new, critical insights into the place-based approaches to ecosystem assessment that are now emerging.

Assessing Landscape Functions with Broad-Scale Environmental Data: Insights Gained from a Prototype Development for Europe

We examine the advantages and disadvantages of a methodological framework designed to analyze the poorly understood relationships between the ecosystem properties of large portions of land, and their capacities (stocks) to provide goods and services (flows). These capacities (stocks) are referred to as landscape functions. The core of our assessment is a set of expert- and literature-driven binary links, expressing whether specific land uses or other environmental properties have a supportive or neutral role for given landscape functions. The binary links were applied to the environmental properties of 581 administrative units of Europe with widely differing environmental conditions and this resulted in a spatially explicit landscape function assessment. To check under what circumstances the binary links are able to replace complex interrelations, we compared the landscape function maps with independently generated continent-wide assessments (maps of ecosystem services or environmental parameters/indicators). This rigorous testing revealed that for 9 out of 15 functions the straightforward binary links work satisfactorily and generate plausible geographical patterns. This conclusion holds primarily for production functions. The sensitivity of the nine landscape functions to changes in land use was assessed with four land use scenarios (IPCC SRES). It was found that most European regions maintain their capacity to provide the selected services under any of the four scenarios, although in some cases at other locations within the region. At the proposed continental scale, the selected input parameters are thus valid proxies which can be used to assess the mid-term potential of landscapes to provide goods and services.

Landscapes, sustainability and the place-based analysis of ecosystem services

There is currently, widespread interest in the assessment of ecosystem services, and the new insights that the concept provides in understanding the ecology of landscapes and the science of sustainability. Three major assessment frameworks can be identified in the contemporary literature, namely one based on habitats, one based on the identification of the system elements that delivers the service, and one based on the understanding of places. Although all are useful for supporting decision making in relation to sustainable development, different situations require different perspectives, and so it is important to understand their advantages and drawbacks. Moreover, it is important to determine how they relate to other approaches used, for example, in landscape planning, so that the contribution that ecosystem assessments can make to sustainability debates can be better understood. The aim of this paper is to describe the strengths of the place-based approach because it is more easily overlooked as an assessment option. In particular we will argue that a place-based approach can help us better understand issues of multi-functionality, the valuation of natural capital and the role of landscape in framing debates about ecosystem services and sustainability. An appreciation of these issues will enable researchers interested in landscape to key questions and priorities in relation to questions of sustainability. Although it is useful to consider different assessment perspectives separately, we conclude that in practice, the habitat and systems approaches can form part of a place-based assessment, just as a better understanding of place can enrich assessments that spring from these more natural science approaches. Nevertheless, in designing analytical strategies to take the ecosystem approach forward, we suggest that it is vital to consider these different perspectives in order to build assessments that are relevant, legitimate and credible, and which can effectively address the problems of sustainability that emerge at the landscape scale.

Ethical Considerations in On-Ground Applications of the Ecosystem Services Concept

The ecosystem services (ES) concept is one of the main avenues for conveying societys dependence on natural ecosystems. On-ground applications of the concept are now widespread and diverse and include its use as a communication tool, for policy guidance and priority setting, and for designing economic instruments for conservation. Each application raises ethical considerations beyond traditional controversies related to the monetary valuation of nature. We review ethical considerations across major on-ground applications and group them into the following categories: anthropocentric framing, economic metaphor, monetary valuation, commodification, sociocultural impact, changes in motivations, and equity implications. Different applications of the ES concept raise different suites of ethical issues, and we propose methods to address the issues most relevant to each application. We conclude that the ES concept should be considered as only one among various alternative approaches to valuing nature and that reliance on economic metaphors can exclude other motivations for protecting ecosystems.

Improving the quality of environmental assessments using the concept of natural capital: a case study from southern Germany

This paper explores how the quality of environmental assessment could be improved by using the concept of natural capital. The issues are examined by reference to golf course developments in the area between Freiburg, Germany and Basel, Switzerland. The paper evaluates the site-level environmental impact assessments statements that were undertaken prior to these developments and the related decision-making processes. The case study illustrates many of the shortcomings apparent in the EIA process when undertaken at local scales. However, it is also evident that even if such exercises had been more rigorous at the outset, they would still have been of limited value for assessing consequences in relation to policies for sustainable development. On the one hand, the nature and scale of impacts is highly dependent on subsequent management, which is often not considered during the EIA process and subsequently lies outside the regulation process. A further limitation of the assessment is that it does not take account of the consequences of the economic failure of the project, and the implications this may have for the long-term sustainable development of the area. In order to find ways to remedy these deficiencies in planning for sustainable development this paper considers how the concept of natural capital might be used to develop a more strategic focus when assessing proposals. The paper explores a particular formulation of the natural capital concept, namely the UKs Quality of Life Capital(QoLC) approach, and concludes by considering these ideas in relation to the ‘ Leitbild’ concept, which is now being widely debated in the German-speaking literature. It is argued that these concepts taken together offer the basis for a more integrated and strategic assessment of development proposals.

Defining and Measuring Ecosystem Services

The term ‘ecosystem services’ can mean different things to different people. On the one hand this is an advantage, because it can engage people in new conversations about the importance of biodiversity and the environment. In this sense ‘ecosystem services’ might be thought of as a boundary object, that is, an idea that can be adapted to represent different perspectives while retaining some sense of continuity across these different viewpoints (Abson et al., 2014; see also Briefing Note 7.1). On the other, that multi-faceted characteristic is a disadvantage once we come to measure and monitor these things called services: if we cannot agree what they are then people will not believe what is said about them or act on the evidence we collect. These problems of definition are amplified once we start to make a case for valuing or managing ecosystem services (see for example, Ojea et al., 2012) – that is, to apply the concept in a normative way. This Handbook demonstrates the different ways that people think about ecosystem services; it is, in fact, a microcosm of the wider literature on the topic. Many authors start, quite legitimately, with the definition provided by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005) which describes them simply as the benefits that ecosystems provide to people. In contrast, others follow the guide of TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), which views them as the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being (De Groot et al. 2010). Services, in other words, give rise to benefits; they are not the same thing. Despite these differences, however, both regard ecosystem services and goods as being synonymous. To add complexity to the debate, it is apparent that not all frame the idea in this way. The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (Mace et al., 2011), for example, suggests that it is ‘goods’ and ‘benefits’ that are one and the same, and that it is ‘services’ that are quite distinct (see also Mace et al., 2012; Mace, 2016). So what’s the problem with all these different perspectives? In a sense, we all know what people are ‘getting at’, namely the importance that nature has for people. The difficulty lies in the fact that if we want to understand how ecosystems provide benefits to people, we need a way of characterising the ecological structures and processes and ecosystem characteristics that underpin them in ways that can be analysed. The aim of this chapter is to take the reader on a journey through the terminology surrounding the idea of ecosystem services, not to convince that there is a single, consistent way of thinking about them, but to provide a guide through a complex, and at times, puzzling terrain. 3 DEFINING AND MEASURING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The ecosystem approach as a framework for understanding knowledge utilisation

The ecosystem approach is used to analyse four case studies from England to determine what kind of ecosystem knowledge was used by people, and how it shaped their arguments. The results are reported across decision-making venues concerned with: innovation, conflict management, maintenance of ecosystem function, and recognising the environment as an asset. In each area we identify the sources and uses of conceptual, instrumental, political, and social knowledge. We found that the use of these knowledges can benefit the process as well as the quality of outcomes, and so ‘add value’ to the decision-making process. However, the case studies did not exhibit any simple linear–rational model of knowledge use. Ecosystems thinking took many forms and depended on different institutional settings. As an argument-making device, the ecosystem approach must be seen in the context of a wider set of social and political processes, which involves a range of complex strategies and motives that explain the apparent ‘messiness’ of environmental decision making. The paper demonstrates that as a conceptual framework, the ecosystem approach provides a valuable theoretical template to help us discover how and what knowledge is used in deliberative styles of decision making.

Sustainability Impact Assessments: limits, thresholds and the Sustainability Choice Space

Sustainability impact assessments (SIA) are inherently difficult because they often require policy advisors to compare things that are not easily compared. For example, they generally require an evaluation of policy proposals or options across the ‘three pillars’ of economy, society and environment. In this chapter we explore how decisions are made in relation to questions about the sustainability of policies, and show how the consideration of sustainability limits can help integrate thinking across the economic, social and environmental domains. It is argued that in relation to questions about the sustainability of actions or policies, outcomes merely need to be sufficient to maintain human well-being and that the search for optimal strategies is probably misleading. The concept of a sustainability choice space is developed as a way of helping policy advisors visualise and explore what ‘room for manoeuvre’ they might have in the design of a specific policy. The sustainability choice space can be used to describe the degree to which alternative policy outcomes are acceptable to stakeholders across a range of criteria. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role that the concept of a sustainability choice space might have as part of the sustainability impact assessment toolkit being developed through SENSOR, and how it can be extended by the involvement of stakeholders in the definition of sustainability limits and the kinds of trade-offs that need to considered in a multifunctional landscape.

Introduction to the Special Issue Ecosystem Services

Although geographers have always been eclectic in their approach, the need for broad perspectives and partnerships with other disciplines has never been as important as it is in confronting contemporary environmental problems. This special issue explores a particularly active area of debate concerning the notion of ecosystem services. It looks at new dialogues that are now developing with economists and political scientists, and considers how an understanding of the biophysical characteristics of ecosystems is essential as we seek to bridge the science-policy divide. It has been suggested that we have now entered the Anthropocene, an epoch in which we have seen a ‘quantitative shift in the relationship between humans and the global environment’ (Steffen et al., 2011: 843). Part of this shift involves recognition that while we continue to depend on the integrity of ecosystems for our well-being, we have to confront the fact that people are now one of the dominant drivers of environmental change. As a consequence our thinking about nature, and the way societies interact with it, must be transformed. If we are to solve the problems posed by global environmental change it has been argued that we need better coordinated international research that places equal emphasis on the social and natural sciences (Perrings et al., 2011). A focus on ecosystem services is potentially one way in which a balanced perspective might be achieved. Given the interest that the idea of ecosystem services has attracted in the policy arena (ten Brink, 2011) it may also provide a focus for integrated, cross-sectoral forms of decision-making. The rapid expansion of the literature dealing with ecosystem services is traced in the first paper in this special issue (Potschin and Haines-Young), which suggests that the idea has taken on many of the characteristics of a classic ‘Kuhnian’ paradigm. The relatively limited contribution that geographers have made to current debates is noted, and it is argued that this is unfortunate, in the light of our traditional disciplinary concerns. Although much of the current work surrounding ecosystem services is being driven by the possibility of making estimates of the economic value of the benefits ecosystems generate, such assessments depend on a good understanding of the sensitivity of ecosystem outputs to the different drivers of change in biophysical terms; and it is here where physical geographers can make a particular contribution. These sensitivities need to be understood if we are to estimate the marginal changes in value between different policy options or management strategies. More especially, they also need to be