Changes in the global value of ecosystem services

In 1997, the global value of ecosystem services was estimated to average $33 trillion/yr in 1995 $US ($46 trillion/yr in 2007 $US). In this paper, we provide an updated estimate based on updated unit ecosystem service values and land use change estimates between 1997 and 2011. We also address some of the critiques of the 1997 paper. Using the same methods as in the 1997 paper but with updated data, the estimate for the total global ecosystem services in 2011 is $125 trillion/yr (assuming updated unit values and changes to biome areas) and $145 trillion/yr (assuming only unit values changed), both in 2007 $US. From this we estimated the loss of eco-services from 1997 to 2011 due to land use change at $4.3–20.2 trillion/yr, depending on which unit values are used. Global estimates expressed in monetary accounting units, such as this, are useful to highlight the magnitude of eco-services, but have no specific decision-making context. However, the underlying data and models can be applied at multiple scales to assess changes resulting from various scenarios and policies. We emphasize that valuation of eco-services (in whatever units) is not the same as commodification or privatization. Many eco-services are best considered public goods or common pool resources, so conventional markets are often not the best institutional frameworks to manage them. However, these services must be (and are being) valued, and we need new, common asset institutions to better take these values into account.     

Supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from Australia's agricultural land under global change

Global agroecosystems can contribute to both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, and market mechanisms provide a highly prospective means of achieving these outcomes. However, the ability of markets to motivate the supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from agricultural land is uncertain, especially given the future changes in environmental, economic, and social drivers. We quantified the potential supply of these services from the intensive agricultural land of Australia from 2013 to 2050 under four global outlooks in response to a carbon price and biodiversity payment scheme. Each global outlook specified emissions pathways, climate, food demand, energy price, and carbon price modeled using the Global Integrated Assessment Model (GIAM). Using a simplified version of the Land Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, economic returns to agriculture, carbon plantings, and environmental plantings were calculated each year. The supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services was then quantified given potential land use change under each global outlook, and the sensitivity of the results to key parameters was assessed. We found that carbon supply curves were similar across global outlooks. Sharp increases in carbon sequestration supply occurred at carbon prices exceeding 50 $ tCO₂⁻¹ in 2015 and exceeding 65 $ tCO₂⁻¹ in 2050. Based on GIAM-modeled carbon prices, little carbon sequestration was expected at 2015 under any global outlook. However, at 2050 expected carbon supply under each outlook differed markedly, ranging from 0 to 189 MtCO₂ yr⁻¹. Biodiversity services of 3.32% of the maximum may be achieved in 2050 for a 1 $B investment under median scenario settings. We conclude that a carbon market can motivate supply of substantial carbon sequestration but only modest amounts of biodiversity services from agricultural land. A complementary biodiversity payment can synergistically increase the supply of biodiversity services but will not provide much additional carbon sequestration. The results were sensitive to global drivers, especially the carbon price, and the domestic drivers of adoption hurdle rate and agricultural productivity. The results can inform the design of an effective national policy and institutional portfolio addressing the dual objectives of climate change and biodiversity conservation that is robust to future uncertainty in both national and global drivers.     

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.     

Unpacking ecosystem service bundles: Towards predictive mapping of synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services

Multiple ecosystem services (ES) can respond similarly to social and ecological factors to form bundles. Identifying key social-ecological variables and understanding how they co-vary to produce these consistent sets of ES may ultimately allow the prediction and modelling of ES bundles, and thus, help us understand critical synergies and trade-offs across landscapes. Such an understanding is essential for informing better management of multi-functional landscapes and minimising costly trade-offs. However, the relative importance of different social and biophysical drivers of ES bundles in different types of social-ecological systems remains unclear. As such, a bottom-up understanding of the determinants of ES bundles is a critical research gap in ES and sustainability science.Here, we evaluate the current methods used in ES bundle science and synthesize these into four steps that capture the plurality of methods used to examine predictors of ES bundles. We then apply these four steps to a cross-study comparison (North and South French Alps) of relationships between social-ecological variables and ES bundles, as it is widely advocated that cross-study comparisons are necessary for achieving a general understanding of predictors of ES associations. We use the results of this case study to assess the strengths and limitations of current approaches for understanding distributions of ES bundles. We conclude that inconsistency of spatial scale remains the primary barrier for understanding and predicting ES bundles. We suggest a hypothesis-driven approach is required to predict relationships between ES, and we outline the research required for such an understanding to emerge.     

Demand for biodiversity protection and carbon storage as drivers of global land change scenarios

Many global land change scenarios are driven by demand for food, feed, fiber, and fuel. However, novel demands for other ecosystem services give rise to nexus issues and can lead to different land system changes. In this paper we explore the effects of including multiple different demands in land change scenarios. Our reference scenario is driven by demands for crop production, ruminant livestock production, and provisioning of built-up area. We then compare two alternative scenarios with additional demands for terrestrial carbon storage and biodiversity protection, respectively. These scenarios represent possible implementations of globally agreed policy targets. The simulated land system change scenarios are compared in terms of changes in cropland intensity and area, as well as tree and grassland area changes. We find that the carbon and biodiversity scenarios generally result in greater intensification and less expansion of cropland, with the biodiversity scenario showing a stronger intensification effect. However, the impact of setting the targets impacts different world regions in different ways. Overall, both scenarios result in a larger tree area compared to the reference scenario, while the carbon scenario also yields more grassland area. The land systems simulated while accounting for these additional demand types show strong patterns of specialization and spatial segregation in the provisioning of goods and services in different world regions. Our results indicate the relevance of including demands for multiple different goods and services in global land change assessments.     

Economic and ecosystem costs and benefits of alternative land use and management scenarios in the Lake Rotorua,New Zealand,catchment

A significant challenge in resource management is addressed: the perceived trade-off between economic growth and ecosystem restoration and conservation. Traditional approaches to management regard restoration as a potential cost to economic productivity. In this study we show that by considering a broader range of economic values, including ecosystem services values, an argument can be made that restoration of lake ecosystems also leads to favourable economic outcomes when commonly disregarded values are considered. Our case study analyses the ecological outcomes of different catchment mitigation and land use scenarios in terms of water quality results in a lake, assessing changes in land use values based on opportunity costs, and ecosystem services values. We show that when considering the value of ecosystem services, intensive agricultural land use is not necessarily the most economically valuable form of land use within a lake catchment. Indeed, a shift towards alternative land uses within a catchment can lead to both ongoing economic benefits and improvements in water quality. In this context, land-use change offers an option for water quality improvement that minimises lake and land mitigation costs, while adding value to catchment land use. An argument is made supporting land use change towards indigenous forest types, which can sustain alternative sources of income such as a range of recreational values, while supporting important ecosystem functions for the region.     

Unsustainable landscapes of deforested Amazonia: An analysis of the relationships among landscapes and the social,economic and environmental profiles of farms at different ages following deforestation

In Amazonia, our knowledge of the trade-offs and possible thresholds in the relationships among social, economic and environmental parameters remains quite limited and hinders the design of sustainable socio-environmental systems. To fill this gap, we analyzed relationships among landscape metrics, socio-economic patterns, biodiversity and soil-based ecosystem services within a total of 51 farms located at 6 sites of the Colombian and Brazilian Amazon. Farms were representative of an initial set of 274 and they represented colonization ages from 10 to 80 years and a range of public policies found in the region.Cluster analysis separated farms in 7 types of production systems according to 5 main criteria (size of the farm, human capital, incomes, farm products and production intensity) selected from an initial set of 18 criteria. Biodiversity was summarized into a composite index Bd built with data from 8 different groups: trees, shrubs, grasses and forbs, birds, Saturnidae and Sphingidae moths, Drosophilidae, earthworms and ants. Provision of ecosystem services was quantified by a composite indicator of 6 sub-indicators of soil hydrological functions, C storage and chemical fertility. Increasing intensity of production systems was linked to a significant decrease of indicators of natural capital biodiversity (Bd) and soil based ecosystem services (Es) with 20% and 37.3% variance explained, respectively. No relationship was observed between production systems and an indicator of human wellbeing (Sb) based on a set of 5 criteria identified with the farmers. Findings indicate that early colonizers migrate when a certain level of development has been achieved (as a result of their activities) and are replaced by wealthier populations.An overall indicator of sustainability (Su) – that combines production efficiency (Ep), Sb, Bd and Es indices (ranging from 0.1–1.0) – decreases significantly with the landscape intensification (Li) with 18.7% variance directly explained by this relationship. Su was also significantly related to production systems (36.4% variance explained): while this indicator remained relatively stable with a value of 0.5 across the early and intermediate phases following deforestation, it dropped down considerably (0.2) for production systems based on cattle ranching on highly degraded pastures with less than 2% forest cover remaining. Restoration with sylvopastoral systems allowed some farms of this former group to increase sustainability to a value of 0.35 after less than 5 years. Agroforestry systems on sites deforested at the same time maintained values around 0.5, as they allowed the maximum production efficiencies and maintained relatively high values of the Biodiversity (Bd) and Ecosystem services (Es) indexes. This is evidence that beyond the general negative trade-off between human development and natural capital observed in Amazonia, agro ecological options to revert the trend are quite promising. A general methodological approach for the reconstruction of sustainable landscapes in farms of the deforested Amazonian region is proposed as a conclusion.     

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.     

The devil is in the details: An investigation of the relationships between conflict,food price and climate across Africa

This study investigates the relationship between violent conflict, food price, and climate variability at the subnational level. Using disaggregated data on 113 African markets from January 1997 to April 2010, interrelationships between the three variables are analyzed in simultaneous equation models. We find that: (i) a positive feedback exists between food price and violence – higher food prices increase conflict rates within markets and conflict increases food prices; (ii) anomalously dry conditions are associated with increased frequencies of conflict; and (iii) decreased rainfall exerts an indirect effect on conflict through its impact on food prices. These findings suggest that the negative effects of climate variability on conflict can be mitigated by interventions and effective price management in local markets. Creating environments in which food prices are stable and reliable, and markets are accessible and safe, can lower the impacts of both climate change and conflict feedbacks.