Abstract
The mapping and assessment of Ecosystem Services (ES) aims at better connecting environmental conservation, economic development, and human well-being. However, 60 years after the development of the ES concept, a persistent gap remains between the production of scientific knowledge on ES and its use in support of policy and management. Here, we report on a systematic review of the scientific literature that helps better understand key challenges and offers potential solutions to bridge this gap. The review considered four criteria: (1) how stakeholders participate to studies; (2) how usable ES maps are for decision-making; (3) what policy recommendations were made; and (4) what research recommendations were made. The analysis of 135 papers published between 2008 and 2020 revealed diverse technical and conceptual challenges that could prevent the effective use of ES concepts and methods outside the academic realm. The main challenges identified in the literature were the uncertainty levels of ES mapping outputs, issues of spatial scales, the understanding of ES interactions, and the need for temporal analysis. Many policies rely on mapped outcomes, creating a window of opportunity for the uptake of ES mapping into policy-making. However, it remains key to involve stakeholders early in the co-design of ES studies and to better understand their preferences and motivation to adopt ES mapping in their practices. The study shows that higher levels of learnability of ES mapping practices, further popularization to foster public awareness, and increased capacity building would facilitate the ES concept uptake into decision and policy-making.
Highlights
For over a decade, the concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) has been increasingly adopted in policy agendas to encourage the conservation of nature for the services it provides to people (Jacobs et al 2016)
Several projects have assessed the technical gaps in ES mapping to provide guidelines and frameworks that could favor an uptake of ES concepts (e.g., OpenNESS, ESMERALDA), but far less is known about stakeholders' preferences and motivation to adopt ES mapping in their practices
We carried out a systematic review of ES map usability for decision-making by analyzing 135 peerreviewed papers
Summary
The concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) has been increasingly adopted in policy agendas to encourage the conservation of nature for the services it provides to people (Jacobs et al 2016). If ES maps are commonly used by scientists to support the identification of priority areas for environmental conservation (Dvarskas 2018; Lorilla et al 2020), they recently helped raise awareness on links that exist between ecosystem conditions and human well-being (Brunet et al 2018; Hauck et al 2013). Such a popularity amongst researchers (Egoh et al 2008) has been partly explained by the role ES can play in bridging the gap that often divides natural sciences and social sciences (Drius et al 2019), helping link ecosystems’ states to human well-being (Daily and Matson 2008). Studies found practitioners have a limited understanding of ES concepts, sometimes deemed too theoretical, and do not always have the expertise, nor the time, to integrate ES approaches into their practices
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