Divergent trends in ecosystem services under different climate-management futures in a fire-prone forest landscape

While ecosystem services and climate change are often examined independently, quantitative assessments integrating these fields are needed to inform future land management decisions. Using climate-informed state-and-transition simulations, we examined projected trends and tradeoffs for a suite of ecosystem services under four climate change scenarios and two management scenarios (active management emphasizing fuel treatments and no management other than fire suppression) in a fire-prone landscape of dry and moist mixed-conifer forests in central Oregon, USA. Focal ecosystem services included fire potential (regulating service), timber volume (provisioning service), and potential wildlife habitat (supporting service). Projections without climate change suggested active management in dry mixed-conifer forests would create more open forest structures, reduce crown fire potential, and maintain timber stocks, while in moist mixed-conifer forests, active management would reduce crown fire potential but at the expense of timber stocks. When climate change was considered, however, trends in most ecosystem services changed substantially, with large increases in wildfire area predominating broad-scale trends in outputs, regardless of management approach (e.g., strong declines in timber stocks and habitat for closed-forest wildlife species). Active management still had an influence under a changing climate, but as a moderator of the strong climate-driven trends rather than being a principal driver of ecosystem service outputs. These results suggest projections of future ecosystem services that do not consider climate change may result in unrealistic expectations of benefits.     

Historical influences on the current provision of multiple ecosystem services

Ecosystem service provision varies temporally in response to natural and human-induced factors, yet research in this field is dominated by analyses that ignore the time-lags and feedbacks that occur within socio-ecological systems. The implications of this have been unstudied, but are central to understanding how service delivery will alter due to future land-use/cover change. Urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use, making cities ideal study systems for examining such legacy effects. We assess the extent to which present-day provision of a suite of eight ecosystem services, quantified using field-gathered data, is explained by current and historical (stretching back 150 years) landcover. Five services (above-ground carbon density, recreational use, bird species richness, bird density, and a metric of recreation experience quality (continuity with the past) were more strongly determined by past landcover. Time-lags ranged from 20 (bird species richness and density) to over 100 years (above-ground carbon density). Historical landcover, therefore, can have a strong influence on current service provision. By ignoring such time-lags, we risk drawing incorrect conclusions regarding how the distribution and quality of some ecosystem services may alter in response to land-use/cover change. Although such a finding adds to the complexity of predicting future scenarios, ecologists may find that they can link the biodiversity conservation agenda to the preservation of cultural heritage, and that certain courses of action provide win-win outcomes across multiple environmental and cultural goods.     

Mapping the diversity of regulating ecosystem services in European cities

This paper presents the first analysis of the diversity of regulating ecosystem services (ESS)—key variables for global environmental sustainability and change in an urban era—across a globally important part of the urban world, urban Europe. We map the first pan-European pattern of regulating ecosystem services in urban core areas and their associated hinterlands and discuss data against the background of each city's land-use development history and planning culture. Upon selecting more than 300 cities, we used the Urban Atlas database and a straightforward calculation method to map three regulating ecosystem services. The main results of this study show (a) a heterogeneous distribution of regulating ecosystem services across European cities, (b) considerable provisioning differences between core cities and the hinterland, (c) a grouping of European regions according to their potential for urban ecosystem service provisioning and (d) an ecosystem services supply ranking for European cities. Considerable differences in urban ecosystem services were found among northern countries, such as Sweden and Finland, which are rich in supplying ecosystem services compared to the UK and Belgium, which, similar to Spanish and Greek cities, are characteristically low in ecosystem services provision. Our results provide the first overall picture of regulating services in urban EU-Europe and serve to inform decisions on the key aspects of future European policy and strategies involving urban nature, green spaces and health.     

A place-based approach to payments for ecosystem services

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes are proliferating but are challenged by insufficient attention to spatial and temporal inter-dependencies, interactions between different ecosystems and their services, and the need for multi-level governance. To address these challenges, this paper develops a place-based approach to the development and implementation of PES schemes that incorporates multi-level governance, bundling or layering of services across multiple scales, and shared values for ecosystem services. The approach is evaluated and illustrated using case study research to develop an explicitly place-based PES scheme, the Peatland Code, owned and managed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s UK Peatland Programme and designed to pay for restoration of peatland habitats. Buyers preferred bundled schemes with premium pricing of a primary service, contrasting with sellers’ preferences for quantifying and marketing services separately in a layered scheme. There was limited awareness among key business sectors of dependencies on ecosystem services, or the risks and opportunities arising from their management. Companies with financial links to peatlands or a strong environmental sustainability focus were interested in the scheme, particularly in relation to climate regulation, water quality, biodiversity and flood risk mitigation benefits. Visitors were most interested in donating to projects that benefited wildlife and were willing to donate around £2 on-site during a visit. Sellers agreed a deliberated fair price per tonne of CO₂ equivalent from £11.18 to £15.65 across four sites in Scotland, with this range primarily driven by spatial variation in habitat degradation. In the Peak District, perceived declines in sheep and grouse productivity arising from ditch blocking led to substantially higher prices, but in other regions ditch blocking was viewed more positively. The Peatland Code was developed in close collaboration with stakeholders at catchment, landscape and national scales, enabling multi-level governance of the management and delivery of ecosystem services across these scales. Place-based PES schemes can mitigate negative trade-offs between ecosystem services, more effectively include cultural ecosystem services and engage with and empower diverse stakeholders in scheme design and governance.     

Land-use and sustainability under intersecting global change and domestic policy scenarios: Trajectories for Australia to 2050

Understanding potential future influence of environmental, economic, and social drivers on land-use and sustainability is critical for guiding strategic decisions that can help nations adapt to change, anticipate opportunities, and cope with surprises. Using the Land-Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, we undertook a comprehensive, detailed, integrated, and quantitative scenario analysis of land-use and sustainability for Australia’s agricultural land from 2013–2050, under interacting global change and domestic policies, and considering key uncertainties. We assessed land use competition between multiple land-uses and assessed the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services at high spatial (1.1 km grid cells) and temporal (annual) resolution. We found substantial potential for land-use transition from agriculture to carbon plantings, environmental plantings, and biofuels cropping under certain scenarios, with impacts on the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services including food/fibre production, emissions abatement, water resource use, biodiversity services, and energy production. However, the type, magnitude, timing, and location of land-use responses and their impacts were highly dependent on scenario parameter assumptions including global outlook and emissions abatement effort, domestic land-use policy settings, land-use change adoption behaviour, productivity growth, and capacity constraints. With strong global abatement incentives complemented by biodiversity-focussed domestic land-use policy, land-use responses can substantially increase and diversify economic returns to land and produce a much wider range of ecosystem services such as emissions abatement, biodiversity, and energy, without major impacts on agricultural production. However, better governance is needed for managing potentially significant water resource impacts. The results have wide-ranging implications for land-use and sustainability policy and governance at global and domestic scales and can inform strategic thinking and decision-making about land-use and sustainability in Australia. A comprehensive and freely available 26 GB data pack (http://doi.org/10.4225/08/5604A2E8A00CC) provides a unique resource for further research. As similarly nuanced transformational change is also possible elsewhere, our template for comprehensive, integrated, quantitative, and high resolution scenario analysis can support other nations in strategic thinking and decision-making to prepare for an uncertain future.     

Deforestation-induced costs on the drinking water supplies of the Mumbai metropolitan,India

The success of incorporating natural capital into resource- and land-use decisions hinges on the ability to quantify the ecosystem services, forecast the returns to the investments, convert these values into effective policy and finance mechanisms, and the presence of well-functioning institutions and infrastructure. However, ecosystem production functions i.e., the relationship between regulatory functions of the ecosystem and the economic activity it protects or supports are often poorly understood. Even with respect to Forest Watershed Services – a service that is widely recognized and even institutionalized through market based mechanisms in some parts of the world – the biophysical relationships between forests and services such as stream flow stabilization, water quality and water quantity are undefined, particularly for the tropics. For this reason, this study through time series data and multivariate analysis characterizes the relationships between Forest Cover (all lands with tree cover of a canopy density of 10% and above when projected vertically on the horizontal ground with minimum areal extent of 1 ha), water quality and cost of water treatment in the Western Ghats of peninsular India. In particular, the recursive relationship between the economic and environmental components is estimated by tracing the effects through the two-stage model. Annual value of impacts (increased ‘treatment cost’, increased ‘water losses due to backwash and desludging’, and changes in ‘water yield’) induced by loss of Forest Cover is estimated as 64.96 Indian rupee/m³ treated water/ha/year ($1.32/m³ treated water/ha/year). At an annual rate of change in the forest cover by −0.0088% (average annual rate of change in the forest cover between the years 1994–2007) the deforestation induced costs translate to 3.73 million Indian rupee/year ($0.075 million/year) according to the 2010–2011 prices for the Panjrapur treatment plant of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. Thus, if deforestation is avoided the Municipal Corporation can save significant amount towards recurring costs of water treatment and to some extent mitigate the costs for the development of a new source.     

The challenge of valuing ecosystem services that have no material benefits

Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecosystem service science has made much progress in framing core concepts and approaches, but there is still debate around the notion of cultural services, and a growing consensus that ecosystem use and ecosystem service use should be clearly differentiated. Part of the debate resides in the fact that the most significant sources of conflict around natural resource management arise from the multiple managements (uses) of ecosystems, rather than from the multiple uses of ecosystem services.If the ecosystem approach or the ecosystem service paradigm are to be implemented at national levels, there is an urgent need to disentangle what are often semantic issues, revise the notion of cultural services, and more broadly, practically define the less tangible ecosystem services on which we depend. This is a critical step to identifying suitable ways to manage trade-offs and promote adaptive management.Here we briefly review the problems associated with defining and quantifying cultural ecosystem services and suggest there could be merit in discarding this term for the simpler non-material ecosystem services. We also discuss the challenges in valuing the invaluable, and suggest that if we are to keep ecosystem service definition focused on the beneficiary, we need to further classify these challenging services, for example by differentiating services to individuals from services to communities. Also, we suggest that focussing on ecosystem service change rather than simply service delivery, and identifying common boundaries relevant for both people and ecosystems, would help meet some of these challenges.     

The influence of gender and product design on farmers’ preferences for weather-indexed crop insurance

Theoretically, weather-index insurance is an effective risk reduction option for small-scale farmers in low income countries. Renewed policy and donor emphasis on bridging gender gaps in development also emphasizes the potential social safety net benefits that weather-index insurance could bring to women farmers who are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change risk and have low adaptive capacity. To date, no quantitative studies have experimentally explored weather-index insurance preferences through a gender lens, and little information exists regarding gender-specific preferences for (and constraints to) smallholder investment in agricultural weather-index insurance. This study responds to this gap, and advances the understanding of preference heterogeneity for weather-index insurance by analysing data collected from 433 male and female farmers living on a climate change vulnerable coastal island in Bangladesh, where an increasing number of farmers are adopting maize as a potentially remunerative, but high-risk cash crop. We implemented a choice experiment designed to investigate farmers’ valuations for, and trade-offs among, the key attributes of a hypothetical maize crop weather-index insurance program that offered different options for bundling insurance with financial saving mechanisms. Our results reveal significant insurance aversion among female farmers, irrespective of the attributes of the insurance scheme. Heterogeneity in insurance choices could however not be explained by differences in men’s and women’s risk and time preferences, or agency in making agriculturally related decisions. Rather, gendered differences in farmers’ level of trust in insurance institutions and financial literacy were the key factors driving the heterogeneous preferences observed between men and women. Efforts to fulfill gender equity mandates in climate-smart agricultural development programs that rely on weather-index insurance as a risk-abatement tool are therefore likely to require a strengthening of institutional credibility, while coupling such interventions with financial literacy programs for female farmers.     

Social and biophysical determinants of future forest conditions in New England: Effects of a modern land-use regime

The future forests of eastern North America will be shaped by at least three broad drivers: (i) vegetation change and natural disturbance patterns associated with the protracted recovery following colonial era land use, (ii) a changing climate, and (iii) a land-use regime that consists of geographically variable rates and intensities of forest harvesting, clearing for development, and land protection. We evaluated the aggregate and relative importance of these factors for the future forests of New England, USA by simulating a continuation of the recent trends in these drivers for fifty-years, nominally spanning 2010 to 2060. The models explicitly incorporate the modern distribution of tree species and the geographical variation in climate and land-use change. Using a cellular land-cover change model in combination with a physiologically-based forest landscape model, we conducted a factorial simulation experiment to assess changes in aboveground carbon (AGC) and forest composition. In the control scenario that simulates a hypothetical absence of any future land use or future climate change, the simulated landscape experienced large increases in average AGC—an increase of 53% from 2010 to 2060 (from 4.2 to 6.3 kg m⁻²). By 2060, climate change increased AGC stores by 8% relative to the control while the land-use regime reduced AGC by 16%. Among land uses, timber harvesting had a larger effect on AGC storage and changes in tree composition than did forest conversion to non-forest uses, with the most pronounced impacts observed on private corporate-owned land in northern New England. Our results demonstrate a large difference between the landscape’s potential to store carbon and the landscape’s current trajectory, assuming a continuation of the modern land-use regime. They also reveal aspects of the land-use regime that will have a disproportionate impact on the ability of the landscape to store carbon in the future, such as harvest regimes on corporate-owned lands. This information will help policy-makers and land managers evaluate trade-offs between commodity production and mitigating climate change through forest carbon storage.     

Scale mismatches and their ecological and economic effects on landscapes: A spatially explicit model

Mismatches between the spatial scales of human decision-making and natural processes contribute to environmental problems such as global warming and biodiversity losses. People damage the environment through local activities like clearing land or burning fossil fuels, but the damages only become manifest at larger regional or global scales where no one pays for them. Payments for ecological services like carbon sequestration can correct for these damages caused by scale mismatches. This paper presents a spatially explicit land-use model to investigate the consequences of scale mismatches for pollination and carbon storage services and examine the effect of payment for only carbon storage services. The model integrates processes in multiple spatial scales ranging from the parcel level used by landowners’ decision about deforestation, to the larger scale used by animals to pollinate plants, and finally to the global scale where carbon storage services are supplied. We show that payment for carbon storage services can become an effective mechanism to protect forests at the same time that it creates inequities among landowners in income level.These findings suggest that market-based approaches that focus on conservation of a single ecosystem service may reproduce unequal power relations among landowners.     

Negotiating Indigenous benefits from payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes

This paper draws on research conducted with Aboriginal land managers across Northern Australia to show how and why payments for ecosystem service (PES) schemes should be framed around Indigenous rights to and relationships with their traditional estates. PES schemes offer opportunities to recognize and support Aboriginal communities' land and sea management knowledge and practices, and there is strong evidence that Indigenous communities are seeking to engage with such schemes. We focus on Aboriginal savanna landscape management, particularly traditional burning practices, to extend the ecosystem services framework to recognize Indigenous values and interactions with their lands as a critical service for Indigenous well-being. Drawing on case-study analysis of PES projects negotiated to support Aboriginal fire management programs across Northern Australia, we show how cultural ecosystem services can be applied to represent the active, dynamic and often interdependent relationships inherent in Indigenous human-environment relationships.     

National indicators for observing ecosystem service change

Earth’s life-support systems are in rapid decline, yet we have few metrics or indicators with which to track these changes. The world’s governments are calling for biodiversity and ecosystem-service monitoring to guide and evaluate international conservation policy as well as to incorporate natural capital into their national accounts. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been tasked with setting up this monitoring system. Here we explore the immediate feasibility of creating a global ecosystem-service monitoring platform under the GEO BON framework through combining data from national statistics, global vegetation models, and production function models. We found that nine ecosystem services could be annually reported at a national scale in the short term: carbon sequestration, water supply for hydropower, and non-fisheries marine products, crop, livestock, game meat, fisheries, mariculture, and timber production. Reported changes in service delivery over time reflected ecological shocks (e.g., droughts and disease outbreaks), highlighting the immediate utility of this monitoring system. Our work also identified three opportunities for creating a more comprehensive monitoring system. First, investing in input data for ecological process models (e.g., global land-use maps) would allow many more regulating services to be monitored. Currently, only 1 of 9 services that can be reported is a regulating service. Second, household surveys and censuses could help evaluate how nature affects people and provides non-monetary benefits. Finally, to forecast the sustainability of service delivery, research efforts could focus on calculating the total remaining biophysical stocks of provisioning services. Regardless, we demonstrated that a preliminary ecosystem-service monitoring platform is immediately feasible. With sufficient international investment, the platform could evolve further into a much-needed system to track changes in our planet's life-support systems.     

Historical and future quantification of terrestrial carbon sequestration from a Greenhouse-Gas-Value perspective

Terrestrial ecosystems provide a range of important services to humans, including global and regional climate regulation. These services arise from natural ecosystem functioning as governed by drivers such as climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide mixing ratio, and land-use change. From the perspective of carbon sequestration, numerous studies have assessed trends and projections of the past and future terrestrial carbon cycle, but links to the ecosystem service concept have been hindered by the lack of appropriate quantitative service metrics. The recently introduced concept of the Greenhouse Gas Value (GHGV) accounts for the land-atmosphere exchanges of multiple greenhouse gases by taking into consideration the associated ecosystem pool sizes, annual exchange fluxes and probable effects of natural disturbance in a time-sensitive manner.We use here GHGV as an indicator for the carbon sequestration aspects of the climate regulation ecosystem service, and quantify it at global scale using the LPJ-GUESS dynamic global vegetation model. The response of ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem state variables to trends in climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and land use simulated by LPJ-GUESS are used to calculate the contribution of carbon dioxide to GHGV. We evaluate global variations in GHGV over historical periods and for future scenarios (1850–2100) on a biome basis following a high and a low emission scenario.GHGV is found to vary substantially depending on the biogeochemical processes represented in LPJ-GUESS (e.g. carbon–nitrogen coupling, representation of land use). The consideration of disturbance events that occur as part of an ecosystem's natural dynamics is crucial for realistic GHGV assessments; their omission results in unrealistically high GHGV. By considering the biome-specific response to current climate and land use, and their projections for the future, we highlight the importance of all forest biomes for maintaining and increasing biogeochemical carbon sequestration. Under future climate and carbon dioxide levels following a high emission scenario GHGV values are projected to increase, especially so in tropical forests, but land-use change (e.g. deforestation) opposes this trend. The GHGV of ecosystems, especially when assessed over large areas, is an appropriate metric to assess the contribution of different greenhouse gases to climate and forms a basis for the monetary valuation of the climate regulation service ecosystems provide.     

Social–ecological memory in urban gardens—Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services

Many ecosystem services are in decline. Local ecological knowledge and associated practice are essential to sustain and enhance ecosystem services on the ground. Here, we focus on social or collective memory in relation to management practice that sustains ecosystem services, and investigate where and how ecological practices, knowledge and experience are retained and transmitted. We analyze such social–ecological memory of allotment gardens in the Stockholm urban area, Sweden. Allotment gardens support ecosystem services such as pollination, seed dispersal and pest regulation in the broader urban landscape. Surveys and interviews were preformed over a four-year period with several hundreds of gardeners. We found that the allotment gardens function as communities-of-practice, where participation and reification interact and social–ecological memory is a shared source of resilience of the community by being both emergent and persistent. Ecological practices and knowledge in allotment gardens are retained and transmitted by imitation of practices, oral communication and collective rituals and habits, as well as by the physical gardens, artifacts, metaphors and rules-in-use (institutions). Finally, a wider social context provides external support through various forms of media, markets, social networks, collaborative organizations, and legal structures. We exemplify the role of urban gardens in generating ecosystem services in times of crisis and change and conclude that stewards of urban green areas and the social memory that they carry may help counteract further decline of critical ecosystem services.     

A social contract with the ancestors—Culture and ecosystem services in southern Madagascar

We investigate the role of culture in sustaining essential ecosystem services in the arid and erratic climate of an agropastoral landscape in southern Madagascar. Our fieldwork and interviews in Ambovombe subprefecture in Androy addressed land use, agropastoralism, livelihood, institutions and their moral basis. Our analysis points to the interdependence of cultural practices and ecosystem services: sacred forests, crop pollination, subsistence farming, cattle economy and societal transition and purification rituals. We posit a social-ancestral contract that works as a moral attractor structuring and sustaining the agropastoral ecosystem services system. The contract between living and nonliving clan members underpins the cultural practices and rituals that regulate the vulnerable agropastoral system. We conclude that the well-being values of the inhabitants of the south of Madagascar depend upon moralities that lend legitimacy and stability to the management of the social–ecological processes that precondition ecosystem services production. Neither ecosystem nor culture delivers ecosystem services to society. Ecosystem services are generated by an interdependent social–ecological system in which knowledge, practice, and beliefs coevolve: culture is a key factor in their generation and persistence. The study suggests these are significant interdependences to consider in dynamic analyses of ecosystem service production.     

Tinker,tailor or transform: Gender equality amidst social-ecological change

Global visions of environmental change consider gender equality to be a foundation of sustainable social-ecological systems. Similarly, social-ecological systems frameworks position gender equality as both a precursor to, and a product of, system sustainability. Yet, the degree to which gender equality is being advanced through social-ecological systems change is uncertain. We use the case of small-scale fisheries in the Pacific Islands region to explore the proposition that different social-ecological narratives: (1) ecological, (2) social-ecological, and (3) social, shape the gender equality priorities, intentions and impacts of implementing organizations. We conducted interviews with regional and national fisheries experts (n = 71) and analyzed gender commitments made within policies (n = 29) that influence small-scale fisheries. To explore these data, we developed a ‘Tinker-Tailor-Transform’ gender assessment typology. We find that implementing organizations aligned with the social-ecological and social narratives considered social (i.e., human-centric) goals to be equally or more important than ecological (i.e., eco-centric) goals. Yet in action, gender equality was pursued instrumentally to achieve ecological goals and/or shallow project performance targets. These results highlight that although commitments to gender equality were common, when operationalized commitments become diluted and reoriented. Across all three narratives, organizations mostly ‘Tinkered’ with gender equality in impact, for example, including more women in spaces that otherwise tended to be dominated by men. Impacts predominately focused on the individual (i.e., changing women) rather than driving communal-to-societal level change. We discuss three interrelated opportunities for organizations in applying the ‘Tinker-Tailor-Transform’ assessment typology, including its utility to assist organizations to orient toward intrinsic goals; challenge or reconfigure system attributes that perpetuate gender inequalities; and consciously interrogate discursive positions and beliefs to unsettle habituated policies, initiatives and theories of change.     

Global social and environmental change drives the management and delivery of ecosystem services from urban gardens: A case study from Central Coast,California

Urban community gardens are vital green spaces threatened by global social and environmental change factors. Population growth has reduced the amount of space available in cities, and climate change challenges plant growth thresholds. Urban community gardens provide dynamic socio-ecological systems to study how such social and environmental change factors affect the management and delivery of ecosystem services. They provide spaces where urban citizens purposefully interact with nature and receive multiple benefits. In this paper, we synthesize the results of three years of research in a case study of urban community gardens across the Central Coast of California and present a framework showing how both social and environmental change factors at the regional scale affect the ecological make-up of urban community gardens, which in turn affect the ecosystem services coming from such systems. Our study reveals that global environmental change felt at the regional level (e.g., increased built environment, climate change) interact with social change and policy (e.g., population growth, urbanization, water use policy), thus affecting regulations over garden resources (e.g., water availability) and management decisions by gardeners (e.g., soil management, crop planting decisions). These management decisions at the plot-scale, determine the ecological complexity and quality of the gardens and affect the resulting ecosystem services that come from these systems, such as food provision for both humans and urban animals. A greater understanding of how environmental and social change factors drive the management processes of urban community gardens is necessary to design policy support systems that encourage the continued use and benefits arising from such green spaces. Policies that can support urban community gardens to maintain ecological complexity and increase biodiversity through active management of soil quality and plant diversity have the potential to increase social and environmental outcomes that feedback to the larger environmental and social system.     

A Study of the Relationship between Low-level Jet and inversion Layer over an Agroforest Ecosystem in East China Plain

1.IntroductionWindprofilewiththerelevantlow--leveljet(LLJ)isoneofthemostimportantfactorsthatcharacterizethestructureoftheatmosphericboundarylayer.TheLLJswerereportedinEurope(SladkovicandKanter,1977;Krausetal.,1985),Africa(Anderson,1976;Hart,etal.,1978),NorthAmerica(Stull,1988;Arrittetal.,1997),Australia(MalcherandKraus,1983;Garratt,1985)andEastAsia(Wangetal.,1996;ChenandHsu,1997).DifferentinvestigatorsuseddifferentcriteriaforidentifyingtheLLJs.SomerequiredwindspeedgreaterthanaParti…     

Equity implications of marketing ecosystem services in protected areas and rural communities: Case studies from Meso-America

This paper investigates the equity implications of marketing ecosystem services in protected areas and rural communities. We use a three-tiered equity framework to analyse four distinct efforts to commercialise watershed recharge and carbon dioxide fixation by forests in Meso-America. We show that project development and participation are strongly mediated by organisational networks, as well as existing rights of access over land and forest resources. We demonstrate that procedural fairness diverges strongly when initiatives are implemented in protected areas or in rural communities. While in the former reserve managers and intermediaries concentrate all decision-making power, initiatives working with rural communities are able to integrate more significantly service providers in management decisions. Marketing ecosystem services in protected areas contributes to reduce expenditure rates for protected area management, but also results in less equitable outcomes, as rural communities and forest resource users become excluded from receiving sustained development benefits. When ecosystem services are commercialised by rural farmers, payments do not cover opportunity costs but act as a significant incentive for participation in most cases. Ecosystem service providers also benefit from complementary project activities, such as forest management training and agricultural extension support. We argue that limited economic impact and existing inequities in decision-making and outcomes can be explained by problems of institutional design, in particular the inability of markets and payments for ecosystem services to account for context-related factors, such as property rights.