Abstract
Ecosystem services can provide a wide range of benefits for human well-being, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services and benefitting both private and public interests in different sectors of society. Biophysical, economic and social factors all make it unlikely that multiple needs will be met simultaneously without deliberate efforts, yet while there is still much interest in developing win-win outcomes there is little understanding of what is required for them to be achieved. We analysed outcomes in a wide range of case studies where ecosystem services had been used for human well-being. Using systematic mapping of the literature from 2000 to 2013, we identified 1324 potentially relevant reports, 92 of which were selected for the review, creating a database of 231 actual or potential recorded trade-offs and synergies. The analysis of these case studies highlighted significant gaps in the literature, including: a limited geographic distribution of case studies, a focus on provisioning as opposed to non-provisioning services and a lack of studies exploring the link between ecosystem service trade-offs or synergies and the ultimate impact on human well-being. Trade-offs are recorded almost three times as often as synergies and the analysis indicates that there are three significant indicators that a trade-off will occur: at least one of the stakeholders having a private interest in the natural resources available, the involvement of provisioning ecosystem services and at least one of the stakeholders acting at the local scale. There is not, however, a generalisable context for a win-win, indicating that these trade-off indicators, although highlighting where a trade-off may occur do not indicate that it is inevitable. Taking account of why trade-offs occur (e.g. from failures in management or a lack of accounting for all stakeholders) is more likely to create win-win situations than planning for a win-win from the outset. Consequently, taking a trade-offs as opposed to a win-win approach, by having an awareness of and accounting for factors that predict a trade-off (private interest, provisioning versus other ES, local stakeholder) and the reasons why trade-offs are often the outcome, it may be possible to create the synergies we seek to achieve.
Highlights
One core idea from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is that human well-being is tightly linked to environmental conditions and good environmental management could, in principle, deliver better outcomes for people, resulting in win-wins (Tallis et al, 2008)
When examining the examples of win-wins in greater detail, it appears that in many cases the reasons why they succeeded in creating synergies between different ecosystem services (ES) is that managers have avoided or overcome the reasons for why trade-offs arise, namely; failure to account for all benefits or stakeholders, failed management and an assumption that provisioning services should always dominate any other services
This study demonstrates that there are still a large number of gaps in the literature, providing opportunities for further research geographically, by ES type and into the links between socioeconomic factors and human well-being and ES
Summary
One core idea from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is that human well-being is tightly linked to environmental conditions and good environmental management could, in principle, deliver better outcomes for people, resulting in win-wins (Tallis et al, 2008). Pressures on all ecosystem services (ES) worldwide are likely to increase (Rodriguez et al, 2006) as a result of increasing demands on natural resources from a growing human population, and model-based estimates of future worldwide ES suggest intensification of tradeoffs between ESs increasing globally and certain regions experiencing rapid changes in ES (Alcamo et al, 2005).
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