Grasp the prior ecosystem services in multi-objective ecological restoration

Abstract

Multi-objective ecological restoration has the potential ability to provide social-ecological benefits according to different demands, contributing to sustainable development. However, the current multi-objective ecological restoration strategies are mostly dependent on supply-based benefits assessment for ecosystem services enhancement and tend to ignore the priority in different social-ecological systems. We discuss three questions, including why it is important to distinguish primary and secondary weights of ecological restoration objectives; what relationships exist between ecological restoration objectives and ecosystem services across scales; and what the future influences of regional development are on the social-ecological benefits after ecological restoration. Under the four perspectives of supply–demand matching, cost–benefit matching, global–local matching, and present–future matching, we emphasize the need for new approaches in the enhancement of prior ecosystem services to meet global and local demands of current and future social-ecological benefits in ecological restoration. Multi-objective ecological restoration should further emphasize quantifying the dynamics of ecosystem services supply and demand under different ecological restoration objectives, and prioritize the temporal characteristics of the trade-off between multiple benefits of ecological restoration to evaluate long-term benefits with upfront economic costs. Moreover, it is necessary to explore how to establish a regional or global unified market depended on the payments for ecosystem services in ecological restoration.