Abstract
This article describes a method to allow for the incorporation of ecosystem services (ES) into policy, applied to the case of the River Blackwater Estuary, County Cork. The concept of ES has become mainstreamed into many country’s policies worldwide. However, practical applications of ES assessment are still far from mainstream. This paper aims to assess ES in three sites to inform site selection for conservation and enhancement measures. First, ES likely to occur in the proposed development sites were identified based on literature review, interviews and expert judgement. Second an assessment methodology involving a public survey was developed and applied. Finally, the results of the assessment were aggregated based on the use level for cultural services and the on-site area for regulating and provisioning services; the results were normalised and synthesised to produce a replicable basis for comparison across the sites. The assessment demonstrated a low-cost, practical methodology for incorporating ES into local decision-making. Regulating and cultural services were most valued at the three sites, with limited levels of provisioning services being provided. While pollination (a supporting service/intermediate regulating service) received highest overall scores, a suite of cultural services was also highly valued. The survey suggested that public engagement with ES concepts may be hampered by technical jargon, such as that employed by the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), and also illustrated that in this case the public engaged better with the intermediate or supporting ES of pollination than other final services that provided benefits directly to them. The implications of these findings for future applications and the assessment methodology are discussed.
Highlights
Estuaries are often desirable locations to live and work, with 22 of the 32 largest cities in the world located on estuaries
Demand was estimated based on the levels of interaction; for regulating services, the service was assumed to scale with ecosystem processes, and the amount of habitat present was used as a simplifying proxy
Since the area-based estimates of supply for regulating services could not be assumed to be equivalent to the use-based estimates of demand for cultural services, the total values for each service were scaled relative to each other where the highest value in each category was assumed to be worth 100%, with other services being expressed as a percentage of this total
Summary
Estuaries are often desirable locations to live and work, with 22 of the 32 largest cities in the world located on estuaries. These ecosystems, with their unique plant and animal life, provide a variety of services that foster human well-being [1]. Costanza et al (1997) offered a crude estimate of the value of ES globally [4], and the concept of ES gained further traction through the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which presented the first classification of ES, recognising supporting, cultural and provisioning services [2]. The Common International Classification for Ecosystem Services (CICES) [7], has become the emerging international standard for classification of ES. This considers both biotic and abiotic services, and its approach is firmly rooted in the systematic classification systems of the natural science tradition, with various categories and subcategories identified for each service type
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