Abstract
The promise that ecosystem service assessments will contribute to better decision-making is not yet proven. We analyse how knowledge on ecosystem services is actually used to inform land and water management in 22 case studies covering different social-ecological systems in European and Latin American countries. None of the case studies reported instrumental use of knowledge in a sense that ecosystem service knowledge would have served asan impartial arbiter between policy options. Yet, in most cases, there was some evidence of conceptual learning as a result of close interaction between researchers, practitioners and stakeholders. We observed several factors that constrained knowledge uptake, including competing interests and political agendas, scientific disputes, professional norms and competencies, and lack of vertical and horizontal integration. Ecosystem knowledge played a small role particularly in those planning and policy-making situations where it challenged established interests and the current distribution of benefits from ecosystems. The factors that facilitated knowledge use included application of transparent participatory methods, social capital, policy champions and clear synergies between ecosystem services and human well-being. The results are aligned with previous studies which have emphasized the importance of building local capacity, ownership and trust for the long-term success of ecosystem service research.
Highlights
The premise in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB, 2010) and other significant research interventions on ecosystem services (e.g. de Groot et al, 2010; Kareiva et al, 2011; Maes et al, 2012; Braat and de Groot, 2012) is that knowledge of ecosystem services and their values can be used to inform, and improve, decision-making
The authors find no support for the assumption that environmental values would be given greater weight if they are represented in economic terms: ‘‘[W] here novel assessment approaches lead to conclusions that challenge economic priorities, the fact that environmental values might come clothed in economic language of ‘capital’ or ‘services’ offers little protection against them being criticized or set aside”
Water regulation in Kiskunság Sand Ridge (KISK) aimed at influencing water retention management and combatting a drop in ground water level resulting from drainage, carried out in the last century to convert wetland area to agricultural land, and currently used to protect farmlands from inland water
Summary
The premise in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB, 2010) and other significant research interventions on ecosystem services (e.g. de Groot et al, 2010; Kareiva et al, 2011; Maes et al, 2012; Braat and de Groot, 2012) is that knowledge of ecosystem services and their values can be used to inform, and improve, decision-making. In the few studies that have addressed ecosystem service knowledge use, a core message is that direct use of the concept or the approach in supporting decision-making is limited This is the case, for example, in Australian natural resource management (Plant and Ryan, 2013), German and Finnish land-use planning (Albert et al, 2014; Rinne and Primmer, 2016), the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) (Waylen and Young, 2014) and other environmental assessments (Cowell and Lennon, 2014; Turnpenny et al, 2014), as well as in European decision-making more generally (Hauck et al, 2013). Turnpenny et al (2014) find that there are still significant obstacles standing in the way of the systematic embedding of an ecosystem service approach in UK policy appraisal documents They maintain that understanding the use of knowledge on ecosystem services in decision-making requires an understanding of the barriers and enabling factors operating at different levels within institutions. On a more optimistic note, Haines-Young and Potschin (2014), McKenzie et al (2014), Ruckelshaus et al (2015) and Saarela and Rinne (2016) observed that local actors were able to form an agreed evidence base on ecosystem services in concrete case studies in which knowledge users have been involved in knowledge generation
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