Ecosystem services as if people mattered

Ecosystem services as if people mattered Theme Ecosystem Pressures and Limits Track Biodiversity and Ecosystem threats Justification of the paper The complexity and diversity of meanings attributed to nature by human... [ view full abstract ]

Ecosystem services as if people mattered

Theme
Ecosystem Pressures and Limits

Track
Biodiversity and Ecosystem threats

Justification of the paper
The complexity and diversity of meanings attributed to nature by human societies and cultures is all too easily brushed aside by the techno-bureaucratic rationality of monetisation. Individual preferences are taken into account (albeit in methodologically dubious ways), but social decision processes are ignored. External experts decide which service is valuable to whom.
The paper provides an alternative by focussing on how agents take decisions, in particular in dilemma situations when they have to decide between private benefit and the public good. Resource managers, decision makers and researchers are the key addressees of the paper.

Purpose
Decision makers should take this into account to avoid decisions which are in clear contradiction to peoples’ will and values. Researchers should recognise that bottom-up approaches, stakeholder involvement and local preferences have to be the basis of ecosystem valuation, and that the economic calculus is bound to fail.

Theoretical framework
Integrating the ESS cascade approach of Spangenberg et al. 2014a;b, von Haaren 2014, and the social-ecological system framework SES developed by E. Ostrom and collaborators to highlight the role of agents’ decisions in ecosystem service provision and system management (full references have too many words ).

Results and conclusions
We show that an analysis based on the SES framework, although in contradiction to the logic of monetisation, can be integrated into the ecosystem service cascade model. However, significant problems in harmonising the terminology of two independent bodies of investigation have to be solved for a fruitful cros-fertilisation.

Implications for Tipping Points
Avoiding tipping points is the key challenge whenever there is a risk of over-exploitation or under-provision along the transformation process from ESPs to ecosystem service benefits.

Key words
ESS cascade, SES framework, dilemmas