Matthias Schröter

Assessing nature’s contributions to people

Recognizing culture, and diverse sources of knowledge, can improve assessments A major challenge today and into the future is to maintain or enhance beneficial contributions of nature to a good quality of life for all people. This is among the key motivations of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a joint global effort by governments, academia, and civil society to assess and promote knowledge of Earths biodiversity and ecosystems and their contribution to human societies in order to inform policy formulation. One of the more recent key elements of the IPBES conceptual framework (1) is the notion of natures contributions to people (NCP), which builds on the ecosystem service concept popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) (2). But as we detail below, NCP as defined and put into practice in IPBES differs from earlier work in several important ways. First, the NCP approach recognizes the central and pervasive role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. Second, use of NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding natures contribution to people.

Ecosystem services and opportunity costs shift spatial priorities for conserving forest biodiversity.

Inclusion of spatially explicit information on ecosystem services in conservation planning is a fairly new practice. This study analyses how the incorporation of ecosystem services as conservation features can affect conservation of forest biodiversity and how different opportunity cost constraints can change spatial priorities for conservation. We created spatially explicit cost-effective conservation scenarios for 59 forest biodiversity features and five ecosystem services in the county of Telemark (Norway) with the help of the heuristic optimisation planning software, Marxan with Zones. We combined a mix of conservation instruments where forestry is either completely (non-use zone) or partially restricted (partial use zone). Opportunity costs were measured in terms of foregone timber harvest, an important provisioning service in Telemark. Including a number of ecosystem services shifted priority conservation sites compared to a case where only biodiversity was considered, and increased the area of both the partial (+36.2%) and the non-use zone (+3.2%). Furthermore, opportunity costs increased (+6.6%), which suggests that ecosystem services may not be a side-benefit of biodiversity conservation in this area. Opportunity cost levels were systematically changed to analyse their effect on spatial conservation priorities. Conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services trades off against timber harvest. Currently designated nature reserves and landscape protection areas achieve a very low proportion (9.1%) of the conservation targets we set in our scenario, which illustrates the high importance given to timber production at present. A trade-off curve indicated that large marginal increases in conservation target achievement are possible when the budget for conservation is increased. Forty percent of the maximum hypothetical opportunity costs would yield an average conservation target achievement of 79%.

National Ecosystem Assessments in Europe: A Review

Abstract National ecosystem assessments form an essential knowledge base for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyze eight European (sub-)national ecosystem assessments (Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Flanders, Netherlands, Finland, and Germany) and compare their objectives, political context, methods, and operationalization. We observed remarkable differences in breadth of the assessment, methods employed, variety of services considered, policy mandates, and funding mechanisms. Biodiversity and ecosystem services are mainly assessed independently, with biodiversity conceptualized as underpinning services, as a source of conflict with services, or as a service in itself. Recommendations derived from our analysis for future ecosystem assessments include the needs to improve the common evidence base, to advance the mapping of services, to consider international flows of services, and to connect more strongly to policy questions. Although the context specificity of national ecosystem assessments is acknowledged as important, a greater harmonization across assessments could help to better inform common European policies and future pan-regional assessments.

Operationalizing Network Theory for Ecosystem Service Assessments

Managing ecosystems to provide ecosystem services in the face of global change is a pressing challenge for policy and science. Predicting how alternative management actions and changing future conditions will alter services is complicated by interactions among components in ecological and socioeconomic systems. Failure to understand those interactions can lead to detrimental outcomes from management decisions. Network theory that integrates ecological and socioeconomic systems may provide a path to meeting this challenge. While network theory offers promising approaches to examine ecosystem services, few studies have identified how to operationalize networks for managing and assessing diverse ecosystem services. We propose a framework for how to use networks to assess how drivers and management actions will directly and indirectly alter ecosystem services.

When, Where, and How Nature Matters for Ecosystem Services: Challenges for the Next Generation of Ecosystem Service Models

&NA; Many decision‐makers are looking to science to clarify how nature supports human well‐being. Scientists’ responses have typically focused on empirical models of the provision of ecosystem services (ES) and resulting decision‐support tools. Although such tools have captured some of the complexities of ES, they can be difficult to adapt to new situations. Globally useful tools that predict the provision of multiple ES under different decision scenarios have proven challenging to develop. Questions from decision‐makers and limitations of existing decision‐support tools indicate three crucial research frontiers for incorporating cutting‐edge ES science into decision‐support tools: (1) understanding the complex dynamics of ES in space and time, (2) linking ES provision to human well‐being, and (3) determining the potential for technology to substitute for or enhance ES. We explore these frontiers in‐depth, explaining why each is important and how existing knowledge at their cutting edges can be incorporated to improve ES decision‐making tools.

Ecosystem Services Go Beyond Money and Markets: Reply to Silvertown

Silvertown [1] provides an outspoken critique on the concept of ecosystem services (ES), feeding a longstanding debate about how to express and conserve the value of nature for humans [2–4]. The paper raises valid concerns about ES monetization, its failure to ‘capture the multifaceted sense in which people value nature’, and market shortcomings in halting biodiversity loss. However, it also points to a supposed ‘dominant neoliberal ideology’ behind the ES concept and characterizes the problem of biodiversity loss as lying ‘deeper in anthropocentrism’.

Incorporating threat in hotspots and coldspots of biodiversity and ecosystem services

Spatial prioritization could help target conservation actions directed to maintain both biodiversity and ecosystem services. We delineate hotspots and coldspots of two biodiversity conservation features and five regulating and cultural services by incorporating an indicator of ‘threat’, i.e. timber harvest profitability for forest areas in Telemark (Norway). We found hotspots, where high values of biodiversity, ecosystem services and threat coincide, ranging from 0.1 to 7.1% of the area, depending on varying threshold levels. Targeting of these areas for conservation follows reactive conservation approaches. In coldspots, high biodiversity and ecosystem service values coincide with low levels of threat, and cover 0.1–3.4% of the forest area. These areas might serve proactive conservation approaches at lower opportunity cost (foregone timber harvest profits). We conclude that a combination of indicators of biodiversity, ecosystem services and potential threat is an appropriate approach for spatial prioritization of proactive and reactive conservation strategies.

Restoration planning to guide Aichi targets in a megadiverse country

Ecological restoration has become an important strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems services. To restore 15% of degraded ecosystems as stipulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi target 15, we developed a prioritization framework to identify potential priority sites for restoration in Mexico, a megadiverse country. We used the most current biological and environmental data on Mexico to assess areas of biological importance and restoration feasibility at national scale and engaged stakeholders and experts throughout the process. We integrated 8 criteria into 2 components (i.e., biological importance and restoration feasibility) in a spatial multicriteria analysis and generated 11 scenarios to test the effect of assigning different component weights. The priority restoration sites were distributed across all terrestrial ecosystems of Mexico; 64.1% were in degraded natural vegetation and 6% were in protected areas. Our results provide a spatial guide to where restoration could enhance the persistence of species of conservation concern and vulnerable ecosystems while maximizing the likelihood of restoration success. Such spatial prioritization is a first step in informing policy makers and restoration planners where to focus local and large-scale restoration efforts, which should additionally incorporate social and monetary cost-benefit considerations.

Editorial: The management relevance of biodiversity science : Recommendations for conservation

The slightly broadened scope of IJBESM puts more emphasis on the management and policy relevance of findings published in the Journal. Papers should address biodiversity and/or ecosystem services, and be of relevance to problem solving in the context of sustainable land and water management, land-use planning or conservation. Relevance of findings for decision-making and management is considered a crucial aspect for all papers published in IJBESM. We also interpret management in a broader way than just ecosystem management. We furthermore highlight that we in particular welcome more interdisciplinary contributions. This reflects recent trends in papers published in the journal and in the emerging field of ecosystem services. We broadened and clarified the topics that papers should address. We suggest that submissions should preferably address the links between biodiversity and ecosystem services, between ecosystem services and management and/or between biodiversity and management. Many papers in IJBESM have recently reflected on the management relevance of biodiversity or ecosystem service research. To date, relatively few contributions address the link between biodiversity and ecosystem services. Of special interest to the Journal are contributions that address the relevance of the ecosystem service concept for conservation. The concept has its origins in (biodiversity) conservation (see Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1981) for early mentioning the concept and GómezBaggethun et al. (2010) for an overview). However, the concept is also increasingly contested for capturing different forms of resource use that might conflict with conservation issues (Schröter et al. 2014). It is therefore of high importance to increase knowledge on conservation-compatible services (Chan et al. 2011), functional links between biodiversity and ecosystem services (Harrison et al. 2014) or local co-occurrence between protected areas, biodiversity and ecosystem services (Hodder et al. 2014). A special issue on the conservation relevance of ecosystem services is currently under review for this journal and we look forward to receive more such contributions, for instance from the Ecosystem Service Partnership (ESP), which has recently held its 8 international conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa (www.es-partnership.org). One final clarification to the scope of the Journal is that we explicitly welcome contributions that develop and improve methods and tools to assess the above-mentioned questions in a management context, such as mapping, modelling, valuation (socio-cultural, economic etc.), stakeholder involvement, in situ and ex situ experiments etc. Several papers in the journal are already method-oriented (Guerry et al. 2012; Martínez-Harms & Balvanera 2012; Schulp et al. 2012; Beichler 2015; Duru et al. 2015) and at the same time do provide relevant insights for decision making.

Assessing nature's contributions to people: recognizing culture, and diverse sources of knowledge, can improve assessments

Recognizing culture, and diverse sources of knowledge, can improve assessments A major challenge today and into the future is to maintain or enhance beneficial contributions of nature to a good quality of life for all people. This is among the key motivations of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a joint global effort by governments, academia, and civil society to assess and promote knowledge of Earths biodiversity and ecosystems and their contribution to human societies in order to inform policy formulation. One of the more recent key elements of the IPBES conceptual framework (1) is the notion of natures contributions to people (NCP), which builds on the ecosystem service concept popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) (2). But as we detail below, NCP as defined and put into practice in IPBES differs from earlier work in several important ways. First, the NCP approach recognizes the central and pervasive role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. Second, use of NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding natures contribution to people.