Making ecosystem services part of business as usual in federal governance

Abstract

On October 7, 2015, the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) jointly issued a memorandum (http://1.usa.gov/1RxMT2p) titled Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Federal Decision Making. Although released with little fanfare, this memorandum – issued to all federal agencies – represents an extraordinary, mandatory directive requiring that they develop and institutionalize policies to promote consideration of ecosystem services (ES) in planning, investments, and regulatory activities, including permitting decisions. Its purpose is to integrate into federal decisions an accounting of the trade-offs in ES associated with federal actions, including public benefits often excluded from our market-based economy. Many ecologists will recognize the influence of the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which included among its core recommendations a call for policy makers to integrate ecological information into natural resource management decisions. In the years since the MA, the science of ES has made considerable progress in building a knowledge base for use by lawmakers and regulators; the literature has grown by nearly 200% in just the past 6 years (Adhikari and Hartemink 2016; Geoderma 262: 101–11) and includes major reviews and syntheses such as the “Nature as Capital” special feature in PNAS in 2015. The new OMB directive on ES validates the field's remarkable advancements and its calls for a greater role in governance. It also affirms ecology's potential to have a positive impact on both the management of natural resources and economic efficiency, by reducing harmful externalities and improving the accuracy of the cost–benefit analyses required for major federal actions. In addition, the memorandum represents an important call to action for the ecological sciences community to help government – and society – further evolve and bring into the mainstream our collective understanding of the interdependencies and interactions between the biosphere and human health and well-being. Substantial knowledge gaps remain in the basic mechanics of how ecosystems actually deliver valuable services, and policy makers – especially those unaccustomed to working with ecological science – will need research relevant to their missions. For example, how might education and public health outcomes be affected if students or Medicaid beneficiaries have greater access to natural park lands? How might accounting for the coastal ES lost due to eutrophication affect decisions made by regulators who oversee water-quality control or fertilizer use? Ecological scientists have a vital role to play in ushering in this new paradigm. First, it is critical for researchers to understand that the memorandum is not simply a call for more static valuation studies of specific geographic locations. To be responsive to the OMB directive, agencies will need well-designed and targeted ecological and ES research that can inform specific policies and help them develop frameworks for day-to-day decision making – to put ES knowledge to work in the federal government's “business as usual” scenarios. For instance, a recent analysis of the storm protection benefits of coastal ecosystems identified several gaps in the technical understanding of how habitats like salt marshes and mangroves attenuate waves and buffer storm surges (Sutton-Grier et al. 2015; Environ Sci Policy 51: 137– 48); this information is acutely relevant to the responsibilities of agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and informed the OSTP report Ecosystem service assessment: federal research needs for coastal green infrastructure, released in August 2015. The OMB's memorandum on ES could facilitate the intake and application of academic ES research like this across the federal government. Earlier this spring, under the process established in the OMB memorandum, agencies submitted preliminary reports to CEQ identifying existing ES programs they have underway and areas where ES practice could be applicable. CEQ and OMB will distill this information into mandatory implementation guidance, expected for preliminary release around December 2016. This document will establish common terminology and best practices for using ES information throughout the federal government, guidance that will also provide academic researchers with a clear “on ramp”, by specifying how to maximize uptake of their research by relevant federal agencies. President Obama's leadership through the OMB directive on ES provides a rare and extremely important opportunity for ecologists to step up and provide their best ideas and research in order to improve federal governance – an outcome long identified as crucial to slow global ecological decline. Let's get to it!