Natural capital and ecosystem services informing decisions: From promise to practice

Essential Variables for Environmental Monitoring: What Are the Possible Contributions of Earth Observation Data Cubes?

Environmental sustainability is nowadays a major global issue that requires efficient and effective responses from governments. Essential variables (EV) have emerged in different scientific communities as a means to characterize and follow environmental changes through a set of measurements required to support policy evidence. To help track these changes, our planet has been under continuous observation from satellites since 1972. Currently, petabytes of satellite Earth observation (EO) data are freely available. However, the full information potential of EO data has not been yet realized because many big data challenges and complexity barriers hinder their effective use. Consequently, facilitating the production of EVs using the wealth of satellite EO data can be beneficial for environmental monitoring systems. In response to this issue, a comprehensive list of EVs that can take advantage of consistent time-series satellite data has been derived. In addition, a set of use-cases, using an Earth Observation Data Cube (EODC) to process large volumes of satellite data, have been implemented to demonstrate the practical applicability of EODC to produce EVs. The proposed approach has been successfully tested showing that EODC can facilitate the production of EVs at different scales and benefiting from the spatial and temporal dimension of satellite EO data for enhanced environmental monitoring.

A Natural Capital Lens for a Sustainable Bioeconomy: Determining the Unrealised and Unrecognised Services from Nature

Human activity has led to degradation of the natural environment, with far-reaching impacts for society and the economy, sparking new conceptual framings for how people interact with, and depend upon, the environment. The bioeconomy and natural capital concepts both blend economics and natural sciences and propose new interdisciplinary, environmental sustainability framings. Despite this similarity, the two concepts are rarely applied together. This paper applies a natural capital lens to the bioeconomy at three different levels: environmental sustainability framings; experts’ principles for a sustainable bioeconomy; and a case study of EU policy. We first construct an integrated cascade model that combines the unrealised potential of bioresources alongside unrecognised environmental services that tend to be systematically undervalued or ignored. Subsequently, we present five cornerstones identified from the sustainable bioeconomy-related literature from a natural capital perspective and highlight avenues of complementarity. The paper concludes with a policy case study of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy through a natural capital lens. There is evidence that the EU strategy has become increasingly aligned with the natural capital concept, but there is scope for further integration. The natural capital concept and related toolbox is an asset for the future bioeconomy to ensure it meets its environmentally sound and ecologically conscious objectives.

Half of resources in threatened species conservation plans are allocated to research and monitoring

Funds to combat biodiversity loss are insufficient, requiring conservation managers to make trade-offs between costs for actions to avoid further loss and costs for research and monitoring to guide effective actions. Using species' management plans for 2328 listed species from three countries we show that 50% of species' proposed recovery plan budgets are allocated to research and monitoring. The proportion of budgets allocated to research and monitoring vary among jurisdictions and taxa, but overall, species with higher proportions of budgets allocated to research and monitoring have poorer recovery outcomes. The proportion allocated to research and monitoring is lower for more recent recovery plans, but for some species, plans have allocated the majority of funds to information gathering for decades. We provide recommendations for careful examination of the value of collecting new information in recovery planning to ensure that conservation programs emphasize action or research and monitoring that directly informs action.

Ranking of ecosystem services on the basis of willingness to pay: Monetary assessment of a subset of ecosystem services in the Heihe River basin

The identification of public preferences and the welfares of river system evaluation are consequential for effective renovation of river system as well as viable river management. For this reason, the focus of current study was emphasized on respondent's willingness to pay through implementation of Random Parameter Logit model using data collected through choice experiment technique, in which the preferences of sampled respondent's in urban, rural and pooled data was evaluated for different abiotic and biotic ecosystem services across the entire Heihe River Basin. The estimated results revealed that average urban households are willing to pay more for the restoration of ecosystem services compared to rural residents. In abiotic ecosystem services, the maximum willingness to pay in all three geographical splitted regions was recorded for river water quality, while lowest was recorded for Lake Area in urban and pooled data and for Leisure and entertainment in rural area. Similarly, for biotic ecosystem services, the maximum willingness to pay was recorded for Greenhouse gases effect in urban and for Agricultural product quality in rural and pooled data while lowest was recorded for Oasis in all three regions. The study also recommends that the government of China should act appropriately to make improvements in level of water quality and restoration of ecosystem services. Similarly, water should be made available to the consumers in its best possible state. Furthermore, in case of any disorder in water quality in some regions, inhabitants need to be informed on time. Moreover, to fulfil the requirements for water, water programs and policies should be planned on the basis of demand. While making any policy there should be diverse actions, keeping in view the residents of urban and rural areas as the results approved the heterogeneity in their preferences.

The impact of interventions in the global land and agri-food sectors on Nature's Contributions to People and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Interlocked challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation require transformative interventions in the land management and food production sectors to reduce carbon emissions, strengthen adaptive capacity, and increase food security. However, deciding which interventions to pursue and understanding their relative co-benefits with and trade-offs against different social and environmental goals have been difficult without comparisons across a range of possible actions. This study examined 40 different options, implemented through land management, value chains, or risk management, for their relative impacts across 18 Nature's Contributions to People (NCPs) and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We find that a relatively small number of interventions show positive synergies with both SDGs and NCPs with no significant adverse trade-offs; these include improved cropland management, improved grazing land management, improved livestock management, agroforestry, integrated water management, increased soil organic carbon content, reduced soil erosion, salinization, and compaction, fire management, reduced landslides and hazards, reduced pollution, reduced post-harvest losses, improved energy use in food systems, and disaster risk management. Several interventions show potentially significant negative impacts on both SDGs and NCPs; these include bioenergy and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, afforestation, and some risk sharing measures, like commercial crop insurance. Our results demonstrate that a better understanding of co-benefits and trade-offs of different policy approaches can help decision-makers choose the more effective, or at the very minimum, more benign interventions for implementation.

China's sponge city development for urban water resilience and sustainability: A policy discussion

China recently introduced a national policy initiative called sponge city development as a holistic, ecosystem-based approach integrated with urban planning and development to address storm-induced pluvial flooding as well as other urban water and environmental issues. The initiative, while following the U.S. low impact development with a concept also similar to the U.K. sustainable drainage systems and Australian water sensitive cities, is subject to a major design issue in practice with infrastructure projects of similar types adopted unanimously across regions despite spatially diverse and heterogeneous hydrological and biophysical conditions. The ecosystem services framework as applied to the urban setting, particularly its holistic consideration of ecosystem structure and management intervention in relation to services or benefits delivery, can and should guide the planning, design, development, and evaluation of relevant projects or nature-based practices for carrying out the policy initiative, a perspective of practical value with foreseeable transformative impact that has received little recognition in China's current green urban movement toward water resilience and sustainability.

Economic, land use, and ecosystem services impacts of Rwanda's Green Growth Strategy: An application of the IEEM+ESM platform

We develop and link the Integrated Economic-Environmental Modeling (IEEM) Platform to ecosystem services modeling (ESM). The IEEM+ESM Platform is an innovative decision-making framework for exploring complex public policy goals and elucidating synergies and trade-offs between alternative policy portfolios. The IEEM+ESM approach is powerful in its ability to shed light on (i) change in land use and ecosystem services driven by public policy and the supply and demand responses of businesses and households; and (ii) impacts on standard economic indicators of concern to Ministries of Finance such as gross domestic product and employment, as well as changes in wealth and ecosystem services. The IEEM+ESM approach is being adopted rapidly and by the end of 2020, IEEM+ESM Platforms will be implemented for about 25 countries. To demonstrate the insights generated by the IEEM+ESM approach, we apply it to the analysis of alternative green growth strategies in Rwanda, a country that has made strong progress in reducing poverty and enhancing economic growth in the last 15 years. The case of Rwanda is particularly compelling as it faces intense pressure on its natural capital base and ecosystem services, already with the highest population density in Africa, which is projected to double by 2050. In applying IEEM+ESM and comparing the outcomes of Rwanda's green growth policies, increasing fertilization of agricultural crops shows the largest economic gains but also trade-offs in environmental quality reflected through higher nutrient export and reduced water quality. Combining crop fertilization with forest plantations better balances critical ecosystem services and their role in underpinning economic development as Rwanda progresses toward its target of middle-income status by 2035. This application to Rwanda's green growth strategy demonstrates the value-added of the IEEM+ESM approach in generating results that speak to both economic outcomes and impacts on market and non-market ecosystem services.

A conceptual framework to untangle the concept of urban ecosystem services

Urban ecosystem service (UES) is becoming an influential concept to guide the planning, design, and management of urban landscapes towards urban sustainability. However, its use is hindered by definitional ambiguity, and the conceptual bases underpinning its application remain weak. This is exemplified by two different but equally valid interpretations of UES: "urban ecosystem services", referring to ecosystem services from analogs of natural and semi-natural ecosystems within urban boundaries, and "urban ecosystem services", a much broader term that includes the former group as well as urban services in a city. While we recognize that a single definition of UES is not possible nor necessary as its application is context-dependent, it is nevertheless useful to clarify the relationships between these interpretations to promote consistent use, and importantly, explore how a broader interpretation of UES might advance its applications in areas that have been neglected. We developed a conceptual framework that links UES to natural and human-derived capital to explain the relationships between the dual meanings of UES and proposed three normative propositions to guide its application: (1) integrate holistically multiple components of natural capital to provide UES, (2) reduce dependence on non-renewable abiotic resources and human-derived capital, and (3) enhance UES through technology. The framework we developed helps to resolve the current ambiguity in the meanings of UES, highlights the need to recognise neglected aspects of natural capital important for UES, and can be used to clarify relationships with related concepts conveying dependence of human well-being on nature.

Global targets that reveal the social-ecological interdependencies of sustainable development

We are approaching a reckoning point in 2020 for global targets that better articulate the interconnections between biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable development. The Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD's) post-2020 global biodiversity framework and targets will be developed as we enter the last decade to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets. Despite recent findings of unprecedented declines in biodiversity and ecosystem services and their negative impacts on SDGs, these declines remain largely unaccounted for in the SDG's upcoming 'decade of action'. We use a social-ecological systems framework to develop four recommendations for targets that capture the interdependencies between biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable development. These recommendations, which are primarily aimed at the CBD post-2020 process, include moving from separate social and ecological targets to social-ecological targets that: account for (1) the support system role of biodiversity and (2) ecosystem services in sustainable development. We further propose target advances that (3) capture social-ecological feedbacks reinforcing unsustainable outcomes, and (4) reveal indirect feedbacks hidden by current target systems. By making these social-ecological interdependencies explicit, it is possible to create coherent systems of global targets that account for the complex role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in sustainable development.

Testing ecosystem accounting in the United States: A case study for the Southeast

Ecosystem accounts, as formalized by the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounts (SEEA EEA), have been compiled in a number of countries, yet there have been few attempts to develop them for the U.S. We explore the potential for U.S. ecosystem accounting by compiling ecosystem extent, condition, and ecosystem services supply and use accounts for a ten-state region in the Southeast. The pilot accounts address air quality, water quality, biodiversity, carbon storage, recreation, and pollination for selected years from 2001 to 2015. Results illustrate how information from ecosystem accounts can contribute to policy and decision-making. Using an example from Atlanta, we also show how ecosystem accounts can be considered alongside other SEEA accounts to give a more complete picture of a local area's environmental-economic trends. The process by which we determined where to place metrics within the accounting framework, which was strongly informed by the National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS), can provide guidance for future ecosystem accounts in the U.S. and other countries. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps that limit the inclusion of certain ecosystem services in the accounts and suggest future research that can close these gaps and improve future U.S. ecosystem accounts.

New Agricultural Model of Economic Sustainability for Wheat Seed Production in Romania

In the conditions of a digitalized and sustainable economy, a smart decision is focused on all demand aspects regarding: the product demand, the quality demand, and the elements of national and international bodies able to ensure the criteria of economic integrity on the European Markets. These aspects represent a set of challenges and indicate the smart component of the management decision assisted by reliable economic models. The present work aims to develop such a model applied to the wheat seed production starting from the study of the specialized literature and using empirical methods. The analysis covers 2016–2020. The main objective of the study is the combination of the information from the observational study to obtain the smart decision model. The study results in the smart model of managerial decision, which represents a real necessity for managers, considering the challenges to which they are subjected. The proposed model in the paper can be used for all types of seeds across the EU and not only. The implementation of the present study by the authors validates the proposed model.

How are the variables for the measurement of natural capital being elaborated?

The definition of variables for the measurement of sustainability is studied in this work. The general objective is to indicate the variables of natural capital hitherto researched for sustainability, highlighting interdisciplinary studies. Because environmental resources are limited and, in certain cases, cannot be replaced, and because their exhaustion in the present can harm future generations and the well-being of society, public policies must be consistent with local and global sustainability. It is concluded that there are still limitations of the definitions of the variables for the purpose of measuring natural capital. Consequently, complicating the process of developing regional policies for the desired sustainability.

Scale effects on the relationships between land characteristics and ecosystem services- a case study in Taihu Lake Basin, China

It is generally recognized that marginal changes in landscape characteristics can influence multiple ecosystem services, but the causal relationships involved are still very unclear due to lack of knowledge and data gaps. Planners and managers need spatial information and evidence on these causal relationships for systematic and sound land planning. This study evaluated the effects of landscape characteristics on seven types of ecosystem services and the trade-offs among the ecosystem services by combining statistical data and the InVEST model with correlation analysis across Taihu Lake Basin, China. We found that all ecosystem services except food production increased from 2005 to 2015 in the whole basin. We also found that correlations between landscape characteristic metrics and ecosystem services indicators changed over time for different types of ecosystem service indicators at the county scale, and between county and pixel scale. The results demonstrated the effects of landscape characteristic metrics on multiple ecosystem services indicators and the tradeoffs among these ecosystem services indicators, and also revealed scale effects on correlations and tradeoffs. Therefore planners and managers need to consider both landscape characteristic metrics and scale effects for effective landscape management to improve ecosystem services and reduce unwanted tradeoffs.

How do biosphere stewards actively shape trajectories of social-ecological change?

The biosphere faces an uncertain future! Embracing change, uncertainty and complexity calls for creative transformative pathways. Biosphere stewardship provides a novel multi actor approach towards sustainability. Despite the critical role of individual environmental stewards, biosphere stewardship emphasizes the importance of collective action, and therefore governance. Biosphere stewardship denotes novel governance configurations with the capacity to effectively approach to sustainability transformation. In this paper we seek to advance understanding of how biosphere stewardship actively shapes trajectories of change to foster social-ecological resilience and human wellbeing. Considering the crucial role of governance and more specifically its two pillars of collaboration and learning, we conduct our study of biosphere stewardship through the lens of adaptive co-management. We first set out a framework for diagnosing and analyzing the process of biosphere stewardship. Secondly, we provide evidenced-based insights from applying the framework in four UNESCO biosphere reserves situated in Canada and Sweden to shed light on how active collective shaping of biosphere stewardship occurs and what it produces. In view of the lack of framework for environmental stewardship, we suggest that the present study makes a considerable contribution by providing an appropriate holistic and systemic framework with operational measures. The study also highlights how the comprehensive and consensual understanding of stewardship is proving to be a means of catalyzing biosphere stewardship by enabling effective crafting of policy design and strategic interventions. Moreover, the application of the framework to four case studies reveals the importance of the governance process attributes (collaboration and learning) in mediating outcomes from biosphere stewardship. Finally, the framework provides the basis to address new stewardship enquiries, which require further research in this field.

Aligning biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services in spatial planning: Focus on ecosystem processes

Although the consideration of socio-economic demands with biodiversity conservation is now high on the environmental policy agenda, it is not yet standard practice in spatial planning. This is argued to be related, among others, to a lack of awareness among stakeholders and practitioners of the underpinning role of ecosystem functioning and biodiversity to support human well-being. Meanwhile, there is mounting critique on the absolute focus of biodiversity conservation on static properties such as species and habitats. The establishment of more ecologically sensible objectives that include ecosystem processes besides species and habitats is put forward as a more effective way of environmental conservation. Methodological approaches increasingly consider ecosystem processes. However, the processes that are included mostly relate to aspects of biodiversity such as dispersal and productivity, and rarely do they include abiotic mechanisms that underlie biodiversity. We here report on the development of a method that integrates two principles which we identify as key to advance the integration of ecosystem services with biodiversity conservation in planning practice: (1) consider the variety of ecosystem processes, biotic as well as abiotic, that support biodiversity and ecosystem services, and (2) link the ecosystem processes to biodiversity and to socio-economic benefits to identify the common ground between seemingly conflicting objectives. The methodology uses a stepwise approach and is based on an extensive review of available knowledge on ecosystem functioning, expert consultation and stakeholder involvement. We illustrate how the methodology supports the setting of strategic goals to accomplish a healthy coastal ecosystem in Belgium, and exemplify how this may affect spatial plans. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how including processes opens opportunities to align biodiversity and ecosystem services and how this increases chances to provide long-term benefits for biodiversity and human well-being. The paper may provide inspiration to advance current spatial planning approaches.

Accounting for multiple ecosystem services in a simulation of land-use decisions: Does it reduce tropical deforestation?

Conversion of tropical forests is among the primary causes of global environmental change. The loss of their important environmental services has prompted calls to integrate ecosystem services (ES) in addition to socio-economic objectives in decision-making. To test the effect of accounting for both ES and socio-economic objectives in land-use decisions, we develop a new dynamic approach to model deforestation scenarios for tropical mountain forests. We integrate multi-objective optimization of land allocation with an innovative approach to consider uncertainty spaces for each objective. These uncertainty spaces account for potential variability among decision-makers, who may have different expectations about the future. When optimizing only socio-economic objectives, the model continues the past trend in deforestation (1975-2015) in the projected land-use allocation (2015-2070). Based on indicators for biomass production, carbon storage, climate and water regulation, and soil quality, we show that considering multiple ES in addition to the socio-economic objectives has heterogeneous effects on land-use allocation. It saves some natural forest if the natural forest share is below 38%, and can stop deforestation once the natural forest share drops below 10%. For landscapes with high shares of forest (38%-80% in our study), accounting for multiple ES under high uncertainty of their indicators may, however, accelerate deforestation. For such multifunctional landscapes, two main effects prevail: (a) accelerated expansion of diversified non-natural areas to elevate the levels of the indicators and (b) increased landscape diversification to maintain multiple ES, reducing the proportion of natural forest. Only when accounting for vascular plant species richness as an explicit objective in the optimization, deforestation was consistently reduced. Aiming for multifunctional landscapes may therefore conflict with the aim of reducing deforestation, which we can quantify here for the first time. Our findings are relevant for identifying types of landscapes where this conflict may arise and to better align respective policies.

Resilience of aquatic systems: Review and management implications

Our understanding of how ecosystems function has changed from an equilibria-based view to one that recognizes the dynamic, fluctuating, nonlinear nature of aquatic systems. This current understanding requires that we manage systems for resilience. In this review, we examine how resilience has been defined, measured and applied in aquatic systems, and more broadly, in the socioecological systems in which they are embedded. Our review reveals the importance of managing stressors adversely impacting aquatic system resilience, as well as understanding the environmental and climatic cycles and changes impacting aquatic resources. Aquatic resilience may be enhanced by maintaining and enhancing habitat connectivity as well as functional redundancy and physical and biological diversity. Resilience in aquatic socioecological system may be enhanced by understanding and fostering linkages between the social and ecological subsystems, promoting equity among stakeholders, and understanding how the system is impacted by factors within and outside the area of immediate interest. Management for resilience requires implementation of adaptive and preferably collaborative management. Implementation of adaptive management for resilience will require an effective monitoring framework to detect key changes in the coupled socioecological system. Research is needed to (1) develop sensitive indicators and monitoring designs, (2) disentangle complex multi-scalar interactions and feedbacks, and (3) generalize lessons learned across aquatic ecosystems and apply them in new contexts.

Resilience of informal settlements to climate change in the mountainous areas of Konso, Ethiopia and QwaQwa, South Africa

Managing change is essential for human survival; thus, the importance of adapting to climate change has been increasingly recognised by researchers and governments alike. This is reflected in the growing literature on climate change and the imperative for action including building resilience in our socio-ecological systems. Despite the large body of research that now exists, few studies have considered the resilience of informal rural or peri-urban settlements in mountainous regions. This article considered the resilience of two rural settlements in mountainous areas, namely Konso, Ethiopia, and QwaQwa, South Africa, to the influences of climate change based on the assets available to them. The authors obtained the local communities' perception of their risks throsugh interviews with community leaders and a survey of 384 residents, divided equally between each settlement. Furthermore, the resilience of each community was assessed on the basis of their environmental, social, economic, human, institutional and physical capitals using a climate change resilience indicator. The findings showed that both communities faced major challenges because of climate change, particularly from drought and poverty. We found that both communities retained some forms of indigenous knowledge, but its greater application in Konso appeared to improve resilience to a greater extent than QwaQwa, where it played a lesser role and the community was more dependent on the government. However, indigenous knowledge alone is not sufficient to support these communities in the long term, given the growing aridity of the regions, and other approaches are also necessary, including government support, to enhance and grow their capitals.

Are Cities Aware Enough? A Framework for Developing City Awareness to Climate Change

Cities are growing and becoming more complex, and as they continue to do so, their capacity to deal with foreseen and unforeseen challenges derived from climate change has to adapt accordingly. In the last decade, an effort has been made to build city resilience and improve cities’ capacity to respond to, recover from and adapt to climate change. However, certain city stakeholders’ lack of proactive behavior has resulted in less effective city resilience-building strategies. In this sense, the importance of developing stakeholders’ awareness of climate change in order to ensure proactivity is documented in the literature. However, there is a lack of studies that define how, when and what should be done to develop stakeholders’ climate change awareness at a city scale. This paper presents a framework to develop stakeholders climate change awareness as a result of a systematic literature review and a co-creation process with the participation of 47 experts through a focus group and a Delphi study. The framework defines a four-step process and includes nine policies that seek to develop stakeholders’ climate change awareness. The framework concludes determining the responsibilities of each stakeholder by defining the policies they should implement, and the effect one policy might cause on other stakeholders and among policies.

Coastal wetlands reduce property damage during tropical cyclones

Coastal wetlands dampen the impact of storm surge and strong winds. Studies on the economic valuation of this protective service provided by wetland ecosystems are, however, rare. Here, we analyze property damage caused by 88 tropical storms and hurricanes hitting the United States between 1996 and 2016 and show that counties with more wetland coverage experienced significantly less property damage. The expected economic value of the protective effects of wetlands varies widely across coastal US counties with an average value of about $1.8 million/km² per year and a median value of $91,000/km² Wetlands confer relatively more protection against weaker storms and in states with weaker building codes. Recent wetland losses are estimated to have increased property damage from Hurricane Irma by $430 million. Our results suggest the importance of considering both natural and human factors in coastal zone defense policy.

A review of LCA assessments of forest-based bioeconomy products and processes under an ecosystem services perspective

The emergence of politically driven bioeconomy strategies worldwide calls for considering the ecological issues associated with bio-based products. Traditionally, life cycle analysis (LCA) approaches are key tools used to assess impacts through product life cycles, but they present limitations regarding the accounting of multiple ecosystem service-related issues, at both the land-use and supply chain levels. Based on a systematic review of empirical articles, this study provides insights on using LCA assessments to account for ecosystem service-related impacts in the context of bioeconomy activities. We address the following research questions: what is the state of the art of the literature performing LCA assessments of forest-based bioeconomy activities, including the temporal distribution, the geographic areas and products/processes at study, and the approaches and methods used? 2. Which impacts and related midpoints are considered by the reviewed studies and what types of ecosystem service- related information do they bear? Out of over 600 articles found through the Scopus search, 155 were deemed relevant for the review. The literature focuses on North-America and Europe. Most of the articles assessed the environmental impact of lower-value biomass uses. Climate change was assessed in over 90% of the studies, while issues related to ozone, eutrophication, human toxicity, resource depletion, acidification, and environmental toxicity were assessed in 40% to 60% of the studies. While the impact categories accounted for in the reviewed LCA studies bear information relevant to certain provisioning and regulating services, several ecosystem services (especially cultural ones) remain unaccounted for. The implications of our study are relevant for professionals working in the ecosystem services, circular bioeconomy, and/or LCA communities.

Understanding Intra-Annual Dynamics of Ecosystem Services Using Satellite Image Time Series

Landscape processes fluctuate over time, influencing the intra-annual dynamics of ecosystem services. However, current ecosystem service assessments generally do not account for such changes. This study argues that information on the dynamics of ecosystem services is essential for understanding and monitoring the impact of land management. We studied two regulating ecosystem services (i. erosion prevention, ii. regulation of water flows) and two provisioning services (iii. provision of forage, iv. biomass for essential oil production) in thicket vegetation and agricultural fields in the Baviaanskloof, South Africa. Using models based on Sentinel-2 data, calibrated with field measurements, we estimated the monthly supply of ecosystem services and assessed their intra-annual variability within vegetation cover types. We illustrated how the dynamic supply of ecosystem services related to temporal variations in their demand. We also found large spatial variability of the ecosystem service supply within a single vegetation cover type. In contrast to thicket vegetation, agricultural land showed larger temporal and spatial variability in the ecosystem service supply due to the effect of more intensive management. Knowledge of intra-annual dynamics is essential to jointly assess the temporal variation of supply and demand throughout the year to evaluate if the provision of ecosystem services occurs when most needed.

Spatiotemporal patterns and drivers of ecosystem service supply and demand across the conterminous United States: A multiscale analysis

Land-use and land-cover changes associated with urbanization have significantly influenced biodiversity and ecosystem functions, as well as the supply and demand of ecosystem services (ESs). Assessing ESs and exploring their drivers are critical for regional land-use planning and ecological sustainability. In this study, the supply-demand matrix approach was used to quantify ES supply, demand, and their gap at multiple scales across the conterminous United States from 1940 to 2011. A new integrated measurement framework was proposed to offset ES deficits by identifying an optimal land-use conversion strategy. We focused on exploring the scale and spatial effects of the impacts of various drivers on ESs using ordination and regression analysis. The results showed that the expansion of developed land led to decreased ES supply and increased ES demand during the past seven decades, generating growing ES deficits at different scales, especially in highly urbanized metropolitan areas. To alleviate or offset ES deficits, promoting the intensive utilization of developed land and converting cropland, pasture, and barren land into forests would be the optimal land use strategies. Moreover, the drivers of ESs exhibited not only scale dependence but also spatial heterogeneity. The smaller the scale, the more diverse the drivers. The natural and socioeconomic drivers explained less variation at the metropolitan scale than at the state scale. Economic factors were key drivers for ESs at the state scale, while social factors were key drivers at the metropolitan scale. The regression coefficients for the drivers of ESs in the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model showed remarkable spatial heterogeneity. The GWR coefficients might have important implications for decision making in ES management. Localized and efficient land-use strategies and management policies are needed to reduce the ecological footprints of urban areas and thus achieve regional sustainability.

Contribution of the land use allocation model for agroecosystems: The case of Torrecchia Vecchia

In this study, we developed a bio-economic model coupling land use and ecosystem services to investigate the role of forests on a broad set of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, soil quality and biodiversity. As a case study, the model was calibrated with economic, agronomic and ecological data from the Torrecchia Vecchia agroecosystem in Italy. In our analysis of optimal land use allocation, the results showed that diversified land use is required to provide a good balance between provisioning and non-provisioning ecosystem services. More specifically, the development of woodlands alongside farming activities had a positive impact on the soil quality score and on landscape heterogeneity, which is a proxy for ecosystem function and resilience. These findings demonstrate that the inclusion of woodlands can alleviate the trade-offs between provisioning and non-provisioning services as they can generate profit while allowing for better soil quality and biodiversity relative to more intensive land use. The study also confirms that a landscape-scale method can be used to investigate agroecosystem management problems when spatially explicit data is not available.

Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change

The human impact on life on Earth has increased sharply since the 1970s, driven by the demands of a growing population with rising average per capita income. Nature is currently supplying more materials than ever before, but this has come at the high cost of unprecedented global declines in the extent and integrity of ecosystems, distinctness of local ecological communities, abundance and number of wild species, and the number of local domesticated varieties. Such changes reduce vital benefits that people receive from nature and threaten the quality of life of future generations. Both the benefits of an expanding economy and the costs of reducing nature’s benefits are unequally distributed. The fabric of life on which we all depend—nature and its contributions to people—is unravelling rapidly. Despite the severity of the threats and lack of enough progress in tackling them to date, opportunities exist to change future trajectories through transformative action. Such action must begin immediately, however, and address the root economic, social, and technological causes of nature’s deterioration.

Mismatched outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem services: testing the responses of crop pollinators and wild bee biodiversity to habitat enhancement

Supporting ecosystem services and conserving biodiversity may be compatible goals, but there is concern that service-focused interventions mostly benefit a few common species. We use a spatially replicated, multiyear experiment in four agricultural settings to test if enhancing habitat adjacent to crops increases wild bee diversity and abundance on and off crops. We found that enhanced field edges harbored more taxonomically and functionally abundant, diverse, and compositionally different bee communities compared to control edges. Enhancements did not increase the abundance or diversity of bees visiting crops, indicating that the supply of pollination services was unchanged following enhancement. We find that actions to promote crop pollination improve multiple dimensions of biodiversity, underscoring their conservation value, but these benefits may not be spilling over to crops. More work is needed to identify the conditions that promote effective co-management of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

A demand index for recreational ecosystem services associated with urban parks in Beijing, China

Good planning for urban parks requires an analysis of the quantitative relationship between the distribution of an urban population and the demand for recreational ecosystem services (RES). A barrier to RES quantification is the lack of connections between survey materials and spatial data. This study developed a logistic regression model for the demand for RES associated with urban parks based on the characteristics of individual visitor and their willingness to visit parks. The model was fitted by a questionnaire survey completed by 4096 park visitors and was used to predict the RES demand in 317 sub-districts of Beijing. Results showed that: (1) park visitors rated sightseeing as the most important, followed by jogging, boating, partying, cycling, and fishing in Beijing's parks; (2) high-income and older residents had higher willingness to visit the parks than did low-income and younger park visitors; (3) the fringe areas between the urban and rural regions showed a relatively low demand index for RES. This study exhibits a feasible method to predict RES demand based on surveys and statistical data. Our research suggests that improving park planning necessitates developing a diverse recreational infrastructure, a tradeoff among different stakeholders, and spatial optimization for sustainable urban development. The results provide a potential tool that can be used to assess the balance of RES in a scenario of urbanization and population growth.

Assessing the sustainability of post-Green Revolution cereals in India

Substantial growth in food production has occurred from a narrowing diversity of crops over the last 50 y. Agricultural policies have largely focused on the single objective of maximizing production with less attention given to nutrition, climate, and environment. Decisions about sustainable food systems require quantifying and assessing multiple dimensions together. In India, diversifying crop production to include more coarse cereals, such as millets and sorghum, can make food supply more nutritious, reduce resource demand and greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance climate resilience without reducing calorie production or requiring more land. Similar multidimensional approaches to food production challenges in other parts of the world can identify win–win scenarios where food systems meet multiple nutritional, environmental, and climate resilience goals.

Sustainable food systems aim to provide sufficient and nutritious food, while maximizing climate resilience and minimizing resource demands as well as negative environmental impacts. Historical practices, notably the Green Revolution, prioritized the single objective to maximize production over other nutritional and environmental dimensions. We quantitatively assess outcomes of alternative production decisions across multiple objectives using India’s rice-dominated monsoon cereal production as an example. We perform a series of optimizations to maximize nutrient production (i.e., protein and iron), minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use (i.e., water and energy), or maximize resilience to climate extremes. We find that increasing the area under coarse cereals (i.e., millets, sorghum) improves nutritional supply (on average, +1% to +5% protein and +5% to +49% iron), increases climate resilience (1% to 13% fewer calories lost during an extreme dry year), and reduces GHGs (−2% to −13%) and demand for irrigation water (−3% to −21%) and energy (−2% to −12%) while maintaining calorie production and cropped area. The extent of these benefits partly depends on the feasibility of switching cropped area from rice to coarse cereals. Based on current production practices in 2 states, supporting these cobenefits could require greater manure and draft power but similar or less labor, fertilizer, and machinery. National- and state-level strategies considering multiple objectives in decisions about cereal production can move beyond many shortcomings of the Green Revolution while reinforcing the benefits. This ability to realistically incorporate multiple dimensions into intervention planning and implementation is the crux of sustainable food production systems worldwide.

Nature-Based Solutions Can Compete with Technology for Mitigating Air Emissions Across the United States

Despite the proliferation of control technologies, air pollution remains a major concern across the United States, suggesting the need for a paradigm shift in methods for mitigating emissions. Based on data about annual emissions in U.S. counties and current land cover, we show that existing forest, grassland, and shrubland vegetation take up a significant portion of current U.S. emissions. Restoring land cover, where possible, to county-level average canopy cover can further remove pollution of SO₂, PM₁₀, PM_2.5, and NO₂ by an average of 27% through interception of particulate matter and absorption of gaseous pollutants. We find such nature-based solutions to be cheaper than technology for several National Emission Inventory sectors. Our results with and without monetary valuation of ecological cobenefits identify sectors and counties that are most economically attractive for nature-based solutions as compared to the use of pollution control technologies. We also estimate the sizes of urban and rural populations that would benefit from this novel ecosystem-based approach. This suggests that even though vegetation cannot fully negate the impact of emissions at all times, policies encouraging ecosystems as control measures in addition to technological solutions may promote large investments in ecological restoration and provide several societal benefits.

Towards integrating the ecosystem services cascade framework within the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) cause-effect methodology

The assessment of ecosystem services (ES) is covered in a fragmented manner by environmental decision support tools that provide information about the potential environmental impacts of supply chains and their products, such as the well-known Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Within the flagship project of the Life Cycle Initiative (hosted by UN Environment), aiming at global guidance for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicators, a dedicated subtask force was constituted to consolidate the evaluation of ES in LCA. As one of the outcomes of this subtask force, this paper describes the progress towards consensus building in the LCA domain concerning the assessment of anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems and their associated services for human well-being. To this end, the traditional LCIA structure, which represents the cause-effect chain from stressor to impacts and damages, is re-casted and expanded using the lens of the ES 'cascade model'. This links changes in ecosystem structure and function to changes in human well-being, while LCIA links the effect of changes on ecosystems due to human impacts (e.g. land use change, eutrophication, freshwater depletion) to the increase or decrease in the quality and/or quantity of supplied ES. The proposed cascade modelling framework complements traditional LCIA with information about the externalities associated with the supply and demand of ES, for which the overall cost-benefit result might be either negative (i.e. detrimental impact on the ES provision) or positive (i.e. increase of ES provision). In so doing, the framework introduces into traditional LCIA the notion of "benefit" (in the form of ES supply flows and ecosystems' capacity to generate services) which balances the quantified environmental intervention flows and related impacts (in the form of ES demands) that are typically considered in LCA. Recommendations are eventually provided to further address current gaps in the analysis of ES within the LCA methodology.

Using co-occurrence network topology in assessing ecological stress in benthic macroinvertebrate communities

Ecological monitoring of streams has often focused on assessing the biotic integrity of individual benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) communities through local measures of diversity, such as taxonomic or functional richness. However, as individual BMI communities are frequently linked by a variety of ecological processes at a regional scale, there is a need to assess biotic integrity of groups of communities at the scale of watersheds. Using 4,619 sampled communities of streambed BMIs, we investigate this question using co-occurrence networks generated from groups of communities selected within California watersheds under different levels of stress due to upstream land use. Building on a number of arguments in theoretical ecology and network theory, we propose a framework for the assessment of the biotic integrity of watershed-scale groupings of BMI communities using measures of their co-occurrence network topology. We found significant correlations between stress, as described by a mean measure of upstream land use within a watershed, and topological measures of co-occurrence networks such as network size (r = -.81, p < 10-4), connectance (r = .31, p < 10-4), mean co-occurrence strength (r = .25, p < 10-4), degree heterogeneity (r = -.10, p < 10-4), and modularity (r = .11, p < 10-4). Using these five topological measures, we constructed a linear model of biotic integrity, here a composite of taxonomic and functional diversity known as the California Stream Condition Index, of groups of BMI communities within a watershed. This model can account for 66% of among-watershed variation in the mean biotic integrity of communities. These observations imply a role for co-occurrence networks in assessing the current status of biotic integrity for BMI communities, as well as their potential use in assessing other ecological communities.

Supply–Demand Coupling Mechanisms for Policy Design

Ecosystem services are important for sustaining human survival and sustainable socio-economic development. For the past two decades, ecosystem services studies have greatly promoted the application of ecosystem services science in conservation. As a scientific method to integrate multi-regional and multi-scale ecosystem service providers and beneficiaries, ecosystem service supply and demand coupling mechanisms and payments for ecosystem services programs are closely linked. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the payments for ecosystem services concept and an evaluation of its effectiveness in implementation. We then analyze the correlation between payments for ecosystem services and supply–demand coupling mechanisms and propose a framework to link these two ideas. China’s practice in implementing ecological redline policy and institutional reforms for protected area management will provide a good experimental platform for comprehensive payments for ecosystem service design and effectiveness evaluation within China and beyond.

Societal burdens of nature loss

Interdisciplinary science and international policy collaborate to stem inequities

Assessing ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies: The need for a more mechanistic approach

Positive (synergistic) and negative (trade-off) relationships among ecosystem services are influenced by drivers of change, such as policy interventions and environmental variability, and the mechanisms that link these drivers to ecosystem service outcomes. Failure to account for these drivers and mechanisms can result in poorly informed management decisions and reduced ecosystem service provision. Here, we review the literature to determine the extent to which drivers and mechanisms are considered in assessments of ecosystem service relationships. We show that only 19% of assessments explicitly identify the drivers and mechanisms that lead to ecosystem service relationships. While the proportion of assessments considering drivers has increased over time, most of these studies only implicitly consider the drivers of ecosystem service relationships. We recommend more assessments explicitly identify drivers of trade-offs and synergies, which can be achieved through a greater uptake of causal inference and process-based models, to ensure effective management of ecosystem services.

Social Learning for Facilitating Dialogue and Understanding of the Ecosystem Services Approach: Lessons from a Cross-Border Experience in the Alboran Marine Basin

Social learning (SL) appears to have considerable potential to enhance the impact of the ecosystem services approach (ESA) discourse on policy and society. However, empirical research to better understand the processes that support SL, the effects it generates, and the conditions that enable such learning is limited. This study assesses the ability of SL to enhance dialogue and understanding of the ESA to support transformative social change in governance practice in the Alboran Marine Basin. To do so, we conducted a specifically designed SL process oriented towards the ESA as a governance approach in this marine region. The SL process was developed through three interlinked workshops involving scientists, decision-makers and local users from Spain and Morocco, the two countries that share the governance of this social-ecological system. The results revealed that the SL process progressively facilitated (i) a more inclusive and constructive ecosystem services dialogue, (ii) a better understanding of the social-ecological system in which the actors were embedded, (iii) an enhanced recognition of science-policy-society complementarities to address sustainability issues, and (iv) a gradual social transformation towards more sustainable and equitable governance. Via the SL process, a variety of factors were identified as contributing to the creation of four relevant conditions that facilitated its successful operationalisation. These conditions included (i) the generation of trust and shared understanding, (ii) the facilitation of knowledge exchanges between actor groups across frontiers, (iii) the promotion of more democratic participation, and (iv) the co-production of practical outcomes. These contextual insights provided empirical evidence of the prominent role SL can play to enhance dialogue and understanding of the ESA for supporting its adoption as governance practice. On this basis, it is argued that operationalising SL in those processes focused on making the ESA relevant to policy and society is pivotal to its implementation in governance practice.

Bio-Based Production Systems: Why Environmental Assessment Needs to Include Supporting Systems

The transition to a bio-based economy is expected to deliver substantial environmental and economic benefits. However, bio-based production systems still come with significant environmental challenges, and there is a need for assessment methods that are adapted for the specific characteristics of these systems. In this review, we investigated how the environmental aspects of bio-based production systems differ from those of non-renewable systems, what requirements these differences impose when assessing their sustainability, and to what extent mainstream assessment methods fulfil these requirements. One unique characteristic of bio-based production is the need to maintain the regenerative capacity of the system. The necessary conditions for maintaining regenerative capacity are often provided through direct or indirect interactions between the production system and surrounding “supporting” systems. Thus, in the environmental assessment, impact categories affected in both the primary production system and the supporting systems need to be included, and impact models tailored to the specific context of the study should be used. Development in this direction requires efforts to broaden the system boundaries of conventional environmental assessments, to increase the level of spatial and temporal differentiation, and to improve our understanding of how local uniqueness and temporal dynamics affect the performance of the investigated system.

The non-market benefits of early and partial gains in managing threatened salmon

Threatened species are increasingly dependent on conservation investments for persistence and recovery. Information that resource managers could use to evaluate investments–such as the public benefits arising from alternative conservation designs–is typically scarce because conservation benefits arise outside of conventional markets. Moreover, existing studies that measure the public benefits of conserving threatened species often do not measure the benefits from partial gains in species abundance that fall short of official recovery, or the benefits from achieving gains in species abundance that happen earlier in time. We report on a stated preference choice experiment designed to quantify the non-market benefits for conservation investments aimed at threatened Pacific Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) along the Oregon Coast (OC). Our results show that a program aimed at increasing numbers of returning salmon can generate sizable benefits of up to $518 million/y for an extra 100,000 returning fish, even if the species is not officially declared recovered. Moreover, while conservation investment strategies expected to achieve relatively rapid results are likely to have higher up-front costs, our results show that the public attaches substantial additional value of up to $277 million/y for achieving conservation goals quickly. Our results and approach can be used to price natural capital investments that lead to gains in returning salmon, and as inputs to evaluations of the benefits and costs from alternative conservation strategies.

Effects of human demand on conservation planning for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity is critical to achieving sustainable development. To date, ecosystem services quantification has focused on the biophysical supply of services with less emphasis on human beneficiaries (i.e., demand). Only when both occur do ecosystems benefit people, but demand may shift ecosystem service priorities toward human-dominated landscapes that support less biodiversity. We quantified how accounting for demand affects the efficiency of conservation in capturing both human benefits and biodiversity by comparing conservation priorities identified with and without accounting for demand. We mapped supply and benefit for 3 ecosystem services (flood mitigation, crop pollination, and nature-based recreation) by adapting existing ecosystem service models to include and exclude factors representing human demand. We then identified conservation priorities for each with the conservation planning program Marxan. Particularly for flood mitigation and crop pollination, supply served as a poor proxy for benefit because demand changed the spatial distribution of ecosystem service provision. Including demand when jointly targeting biodiversity and ecosystem service increased the efficiency of conservation efforts targeting ecosystem services without reducing biodiversity outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating demand when quantifying ecosystem services for conservation planning.

Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective

A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, and health sciences on the impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other dimensions of mental health. We then show how ecosystem service assessments can be expanded to include mental health, and provide a heuristic, conceptual model for doing so.

Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective

A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, and health sciences on the impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other dimensions of mental health. We then show how ecosystem service assessments can be expanded to include mental health, and provide a heuristic, conceptual model for doing so.

Natural capital accounting for better policy

A growing number of countries is setting up natural capital accounts (NCA) based on the system of environmental-economic accounting (SEEA); however, actually using them for better policy making turns out to be complex. This paper synthesises lessons on the institutional mainstreaming of the SEEA and its use in improving policy decisions affecting natural capital. It draws on discussions held at two Policy Forums organised by the World Bank Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services program and the United Nations Statistical Division. Practical examples of how the SEEA helps to improve policy making are explored. Emerging from the Forums were ten principles for making NCA fit for policy. These principles promote a comprehensive NCA organisation, a purposeful use of accounts, trustworthy methods and institutionalisation of NCA mechanisms in government. To put these principles into practice, six strategies are outlined: (1) assure credibility of the accounts; (2) align supply and demand for NCA; (3) assure high level support for NCA; (4) encourage cooperation between institutions so NCA and policy are mutually constructive; (5) provide evidence that natural capital is economically important and; (6) assure policy-relevant communication of NCA results.

Relationship between ecological condition and ecosystem services in European rivers, lakes and coastal waters

We quantify main ecosystem services (i.e. the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being) provided by rivers, lakes, coastal waters and connected ecosystems (riparian areas and floodplains) in Europe, including water provisioning, water purification, erosion prevention, flood protection, coastal protection, and recreation. We show European maps of ecosystem service capacity, flow (actual use), sustainability and efficiency. Then we explore the relationship between the services and the ecosystem condition at the European scale, considering the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems, reported under the EU Water Framework Directive, as a measure of the ecosystem integrity and biodiversity. Our results indicate that a higher delivery of the regulating and cultural ecosystem services analysed is mostly correlated with better conditions of aquatic ecosystems. Conversely, the use of provisioning services can result in pressures on the ecosystem. This suggests the importance of maintaining good ecological condition of aquatic ecosystems to ensure the delivery of ecosystem services in the future. These results at the continental scale, although limited to the ecosystem services under analysis, might be relevant to consider when investing in the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems called for by the current EU water policy and Biodiversity Strategy and by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Coming to Action: Operationalizing City Resilience

There is an urgent need to build city resilience in order to face upcoming foreseen and unforeseen disasters more holistically, economically and collaboratively. Population trends mean that people are moving to urban areas and the traditional approach to crisis management is becoming obsolete as it is no longer able to deal with the new challenges that are emerging such as social dynamics or climate change. In this context, there are numerous studies and strategies that define how to build city resilience and consequently sustainable cities. However, decision-makers have trouble putting the knowledge in the studies and strategies into practice, as they find this information to be too abstract or far from their daily activities. More practical tools are needed to facilitate the operationalization of city resilience and familiarize decision makers with the concept. To that end, this paper presents both a qualitative and quantitative toolkit that enables decision makers to study, understand and train themselves to operationalize city resilience properly. This toolkit is composed of two complementary tools, namely the Resilience Maturity Model (RMM) and a serious game called City Resilience Dynamics (CRD). The paper also discusses the key points that led to a useful, trustworthy and flexible toolkit that decision-makers can use in building city resilience.

Achieving Urban Flood Resilience in an Uncertain Future

Preliminary results of the UK Urban Flood Resilience research consortium are presented and discussed, with the work being conducted against a background of future uncertainties with respect to changing climate and increasing urbanization. Adopting a whole systems approach, key themes include developing adaptive approaches for flexible engineering design of coupled grey and blue-green flood management assets; exploiting the resource potential of urban stormwater through rainwater harvesting, urban metabolism modelling and interoperability; and investigating the interactions between planners, developers, engineers and communities at multiple scales in managing flood risk. The work is producing new modelling tools and an extensive evidence base to support the case for multifunctional infrastructure that delivers multiple, environmental, societal and economic benefits, while enhancing urban flood resilience by bringing stormwater management and green infrastructure together.