Unai Pascual

Bringing Ecosystem Services into Economic Decision-Making: Land Use in the United Kingdom

Monitoring Land Use Land-use decisions are based largely on agricultural market values. However, such decisions can lead to losses of ecosystem services, such as the provision of wildlife habitat or recreational space, the magnitude of which may overwhelm any market agricultural benefits. In a research project forming part of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, Bateman et al. (p. 45) estimate the value of these net losses. Policies that recognize the diversity and complexity of the natural environment can target changes to different areas so as to radically improve land use in terms of agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions, recreation, and wild species habitat and diversity. The value of using land for recreation and wildlife, not just for agriculture, can usefully factor into planning decisions. Landscapes generate a wide range of valuable ecosystem services, yet land-use decisions often ignore the value of these services. Using the example of the United Kingdom, we show the significance of land-use change not only for agricultural production but also for emissions and sequestration of greenhouse gases, open-access recreational visits, urban green space, and wild-species diversity. We use spatially explicit models in conjunction with valuation methods to estimate comparable economic values for these services, taking account of climate change impacts. We show that, although decisions that focus solely on agriculture reduce overall ecosystem service values, highly significant value increases can be obtained from targeted planning by incorporating all potential services and their values and that this approach also conserves wild-species diversity.

Bringing ecosystem services into economic decision-making

Monitoring Land Use Land-use decisions are based largely on agricultural market values. However, such decisions can lead to losses of ecosystem services, such as the provision of wildlife habitat or recreational space, the magnitude of which may overwhelm any market agricultural benefits. In a research project forming part of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, Bateman et al. (p. 45) estimate the value of these net losses. Policies that recognize the diversity and complexity of the natural environment can target changes to different areas so as to radically improve land use in terms of agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions, recreation, and wild species habitat and diversity. The value of using land for recreation and wildlife, not just for agriculture, can usefully factor into planning decisions. Landscapes generate a wide range of valuable ecosystem services, yet land-use decisions often ignore the value of these services. Using the example of the United Kingdom, we show the significance of land-use change not only for agricultural production but also for emissions and sequestration of greenhouse gases, open-access recreational visits, urban green space, and wild-species diversity. We use spatially explicit models in conjunction with valuation methods to estimate comparable economic values for these services, taking account of climate change impacts. We show that, although decisions that focus solely on agriculture reduce overall ecosystem service values, highly significant value increases can be obtained from targeted planning by incorporating all potential services and their values and that this approach also conserves wild-species diversity.

Opinion: Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment

A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches.

Carbon outcomes of major land‐cover transitions in SE Asia: great uncertainties and REDD+ policy implications

Policy makers across the tropics propose that carbon finance could provide incentives for forest frontier communities to transition away from swidden agriculture (slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation) to other systems that potentially reduce emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration. However, there is little certainty regarding the carbon outcomes of many key land-use transitions at the center of current policy debates. Our meta-analysis of over 250 studies reporting above- and below-ground carbon estimates for different land-use types indicates great uncertainty in the net total ecosystem carbon changes that can be expected from many transitions, including the replacement of various types of swidden agriculture with oil palm, rubber, or some other types of agroforestry systems. These transitions are underway throughout Southeast Asia, and are at the heart of REDD+ debates. Exceptions of unambiguous carbon outcomes are the abandonment of any type of agriculture to allow forest regeneration (a certain positive carbon outcome) and expansion of agriculture into mature forest (a certain negative carbon outcome). With respect to swiddening, our meta-analysis supports a reassessment of policies that encourage land-cover conversion away from these [especially long-fallow] systems to other more cash-crop-oriented systems producing ambiguous carbon stock changes - including oil palm and rubber. In some instances, lengthening fallow periods of an existing swidden system may produce substantial carbon benefits, as would conversion from intensely cultivated lands to high-biomass plantations and some other types of agroforestry. More field studies are needed to provide better data of above- and below-ground carbon stocks before informed recommendations or policy decisions can be made regarding which land-use regimes optimize or increase carbon sequestration. As some transitions may negatively impact other ecosystem services, food security, and local livelihoods, the entire carbon and noncarbon benefit stream should also be taken into account before prescribing transitions with ambiguous carbon benefits.

Agricultural intensification escalates future conservation costs

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). Incipient REDD+ forest carbon policies in a number of countries propose agricultural intensification measures to replace extensive “slash-and-burn” farming systems. These may result in conservation in some contexts, but will also increase future agricultural land rents as productivity increases, creating new incentives for agricultural expansion and deforestation. While robust governance can help to ensure land sparing, we propose that conservation incentives will also have to increase over time, tracking future agricultural land rents, which might lead to runaway conservation costs. We present a conceptual framework that depicts these relationships, supported by an illustrative model of the intensification of key crops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a leading REDD+ country. A von Thünen land rent model is combined with geographic information systems mapping to demonstrate how agricultural intensification could influence future conservation costs. Once postintensification agricultural land rents are considered, the cost of reducing forest sector emissions could significantly exceed current and projected carbon credit prices. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering escalating conservation costs from agricultural intensification when designing conservation initiatives.

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: Heed Social Goals

C R E D IT : R O G E R B R A N D T , N P S /W IK IM E D IA C O M M O N S Response CURL MAKES A VALID POINT ABOUT THE BEHAVior of carbonate minerals on multimillionyear time scales. Our interest, though, is in the much shorter time scales of decades to centuries. Considering remaining uncertainties in measuring some aspects of the global carbon cycle and the relatively rapid environmental changes under way in the atmosphere and oceans, quantifying carbon budgets in relevant geological systems for these shorter time periods may be more complicated (1). Our task is to better understand rates and processes associated with mineral weathering and impacts on carbon cycling. C. GROVES,* J. CAO, C. ZHANG Hoffman Environmental Research Institute, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA. International Research Centre on Karst under the auspices of UNESCO and Key Laboratory of Karst Geology, Institute of Karst Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Ministry of Land and Resources, Guilin, Guangxi, 541004, China.

Cost-effectiveness targeting under multiple conservation goals and equity considerations in the Andes

Internationally, there is political impetus towards providing incentive mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), that motivate land users to conserve that which benefits wider society by creating an exchange value for conservation services. PES may incorporate a number of conservation goals other than just maximizing the area under a certain land use, so as to optimize multiple benefits from environmental conservation. Environmental additionality (conservation services generated relative to no intervention) and social equity aspects (here an equitable distribution of conservation funds) of PES depend on the conservation goals underlying the cost-effective targeting of conservation payments, which remains to be adequately explored in the PES literature. This paper attempts to evaluate whether multiple conservation goals can be optimized, in addition to social equity, when paying for the on-farm conservation of neglected crop varieties (landraces), so as to generate agrobiodiversity conservation services. Case studies based on a conservation auction in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes (through which community-based groups identified the conservation area and the number of farmers taking part in conservation, as well as the payment required), identified significant cost-effectiveness tradeoffs between alternative agrobiodiversity conservation goals. There appears to be a non-complementary relationship between maximizing conservation area under specific landraces (a proxy for genetic diversity maintenance) and the number of farmers conserving such landraces (a proxy for agricultural knowledge and cultural traditions maintenance). Neither of the two are closely connected with maximizing the number of targeted farming communities (a proxy for informal seed exchange networks and hence geneflow maintenance). Optimizing cost-effectiveness with regard to conservation area or number of farmers would also be associated with a highly unequal distribution of payments. Multi-criteria targeting approaches can reach compromise solutions, but frameworks for these are still to be established and scientifically informed about the underlying link between alternative conservation goals and conservation service provision.

Networking our way to better ecosystem service provision

The ecosystem services (EcoS) concept is being used increasingly to attach values to natural systems and the multiple benefits they provide to human societies. Ecosystem processes or functions only become EcoS if they are shown to have social and/or economic value. This should assure an explicit connection between the natural and social sciences, but EcoS approaches have been criticized for retaining little natural science. Preserving the natural, ecological science context within EcoS research is challenging because the multiple disciplines involved have very different traditions and vocabularies (common-language challenge) and span many organizational levels and temporal and spatial scales (scale challenge) that define the relevant interacting entities (interaction challenge). We propose a network-based approach to transcend these discipline challenges and place the natural science context at the heart of EcoS research.

Urbanization and the Viability of Local Agricultural Economies

Urbanization presents both opportunities and challenges for farmers and farm-supporting sectors on the urban fringe. This paper examines the effects of urbanization on the viability of input suppliers and output processors and on the cost and profitability of farming. An analytical model is developed to provide insights into such effects. This model motivates a multiple-equation empirical model that we estimate using county-level panel data for California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Results provide evidence that urbanization has a significant impact on agricultural infrastructure, farm production costs, and net farm income and suggest that agriculture-related opportunities of urbanization outweigh the challenges. (JEL O18)