The maturation of ecosystem services: Social and policy research expands, but whither biophysically informed valuation?

A social-ecological approach to support equitable land use decision-making

Human-driven land use change can result in unequitable outcomes in the provision and appropriation of ecosystem services (ES). To better address equity-related effects of land use change in decision-making, analyses of land use and ES changes under different land use management alternatives should incorporate ecological and social information and take a disaggregated approach to ES analysis. Because such approaches are still scarce in the literature, we present a generalized social-ecological approach to support equitable land use decision-making (in terms of process and outcomes) and an example of its application to a case study in southwestern Ethiopia. We propose a six-step approach that combines scenario planning with equity-focused, disaggregated analyses of ES. Its application in our study area made equity-related effects of land use change explicit through the recognition of different beneficiary groups, value types, and spatial locations. We recommend the application of our approach in other contexts, especially in the Global South.

Effects of relational and instrumental messaging on human perception of rattlesnakes

We tested the effects of relational and instrumental message strategies on US residents' perception of rattlesnakes-animals that tend to generate feelings of fear, disgust, or hatred but are nevertheless key members of healthy ecosystems. We deployed an online survey to social media users (n = 1,182) to describe perceptions of rattlesnakes and assess the change after viewing a randomly selected relational or instrumental video message. An 8-item, pre-and post-Rattlesnake Perception Test (RPT) evaluated perception variables along emotional, knowledge, and behavioral gradients on a 5-point Likert scale; the eight responses were combined to produce an Aggregate Rattlesnake Perception (ARP) score for each participant. We found that people from Abrahamic religions (i.e., Christianity, Judaism, Islam) and those identifying as female were associated with low initial perceptions of rattlesnakes, whereas agnostics and individuals residing in the Midwest region and in rural residential areas had relatively favorable perceptions. Overall, both videos produced positive changes in rattlesnake perception, although the instrumental video message led to a greater increase in ARP than the relational message. The relational message was associated with significant increases in ARP only among females, agnostics, Baby Boomers (age 57-75), and Generation-Z (age 18-25 to exclude minors). The instrumental video message was associated with significant increases in ARP, and this result varied by religious group. ARP changed less in those reporting prior experience with a venomous snake bite (to them, a friend, or a pet) than in those with no such experience. Our data suggest that relational and instrumental message strategies can improve people's perceptions of unpopular and potentially dangerous wildlife, but their effectiveness may vary by gender, age, religious beliefs, and experience. These results can be used to hone and personalize communication strategies to improve perceptions of unpopular wildlife species.

Diverse values of nature for sustainability

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature's values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a 'values crisis' underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature's diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures.

Integration matters: Combining socio-cultural and biophysical methods for mapping ecosystem service bundles

Ecosystem services (ESs) play an important role in sustainable landscape management. People value ESs in diverse ways encompassing social and ecological domains and we need to bring these different values together. We used social-cultural and biophysical methods to map a diverse set of ESs at two spatial scales in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Norway. The ESs bundled into three distinct social-ecological system archetypes which were similar in their distribution and relative ES values at both spatial scales. The bundles were also well matched to relative ESs values of the Biosphere Reserve zones (core, buffer, and transition) indicating that the bundles capture the social-ecological systems of the zones. We argue that it is important to consider the social-ecological context of the zones to provide sufficient knowledge to inform management. Our work has the capacity to contribute to sustainable land management that takes biocultural values into consideration.

Broadening Benefits and Anticipating Tradeoffs with a Proposed Ecosystem Service Analysis Framework for the US Army Corps of Engineers

Would-be adopters of ecosystem service analysis frameworks might ask, 'Do such frameworks improve ecosystem service provision or social benefits sufficiently to compensate for any extra effort?' Here we explore that question by retrospectively applying an ecosystem goods and services (EGS) analysis framework to a large river restoration case study conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and comparing potential time costs and outcomes of traditional versus EGS-informed planning. USACE analytic methods can have a large influence on which river and wetland restoration projects are implemented in the United States because they affect which projects or project elements are eligible for federal cost-share funding. A new framework is designed for the USACE and is primarily distinguished from current procedures by adding explicit steps to document and compare tradeoffs and complementarity among all affected EGS, rather than the subset that falls within project purposes. Further, it applies economic concepts to transform ecological performance indicators into social benefit indicators, even if changes cannot be valued. We conclude that, for large multi-partner restoration projects like our case study, using the framework provides novel information on social outcomes that could be used to enhance project design, without substantially increasing scoping costs. The primary benefits of using the framework in the case study appeared to stem from early comprehensive identification of stakeholder interests that might have prevented project delays late in the process, and improving the communication of social benefits and how tradeoffs among EGS benefits were weighed during planning.

An environmental justice perspective on ecosystem services

Mainstreaming of ecosystem service approaches has been proposed as one path toward sustainable development. Meanwhile, critics of ecosystem services question if the approach can account for the multiple values of ecosystems to diverse groups of people, or for aspects of inter- and intra-generational justice. In particular, an ecosystem service approach often overlooks power dimensions and capabilities that are core to environmental justice. This article addresses the need for greater guidance on incorporating justice into ecosystem services research and practice. We point to the importance of deep engagement with stakeholders and rights holders to disentangle contextual factors that moderate justice outcomes on ecosystem service attribution and appropriation in socio-political interventions. Such a holistic perspective enables the integration of values and knowledge plurality for enhancing justice in ecosystem services research. This broadened perspective paves a way for transformative ecosystem service assessments, management, and research, which can help inform and design governance structures that nourish human agency to sustainably identify, manage, and enjoy ecosystem services for human wellbeing.

Spatial analysis of cultural ecosystem services using data from social media: A guide to model selection for research and practice

Experiences gained through in person (in-situ) interactions with ecosystems provide cultural ecosystem services. These services are difficult to assess because they are non-material, vary spatially and have strong perceptual characteristics. Data obtained from social media can provide spatially-explicit information regarding some in-situ cultural ecosystem services by serving as a proxy for visitation. These data can identify environmental characteristics (natural, human and built capital) correlated with visitation and, therefore, the types of places used for in-situ environmental interactions. A range of spatial models can be applied in this way that vary in complexity and can provide information for ecosystem service assessments. We deployed four models (global regression, local regression, maximum entropy and the InVEST recreation model) to the same case-study area, County Galway, Ireland, to compare spatial models. A total of 6,752 photo-user-days (PUD) (a visitation metric) were obtained from Flickr. Data describing natural, human and built capital were collected from national databases. Results showed a blend of capital types correlated with PUD suggesting that local context, including biophysical traits and accessibility, are relevant for in-situ cultural ecosystem service flows. Average trends included distance to the coast and elevation as negatively correlated with PUD, while the presence of major roads and recreational sites, population density and habitat diversity were positively correlated. Evidence of local relationships, especially town distance, were detected using geographic weighted regression. Predicted hotspots for visitation included urban areas in the east of the region and rural, coastal areas with major roads in the west. We conclude by presenting a guide for researchers and practitioners developing cultural ecosystem service spatial models using data from social media that considers data coverage, landscape heterogeneity, computational resources, statistical expertise and environmental context.

The impacts of land use change on flood protection services among multiple beneficiaries

Land use change drives significant declines in ecosystem services globally. However, we currently lack an understanding of how and where different beneficiaries of ecosystem services experience the impacts of land use change. This information is needed to identify possible inequalities in the delivery among beneficiaries, and to design policy interventions to address them. Here, we used a spatially explicit and disaggregated approach to ask how land use change affects the distribution of flood protection among three beneficiary sectors (urban residents, rural communities, and the food sector). Our study focused on the Brigalow Belt Bioregion of Australia - an area affected by widespread deforestation - and assessed the effect of land use change on flood protection between 2002 and 2015. We estimated flood protection per beneficiary sector as the total upstream runoff retention (supply) linked to areas where flood protection is required for sector-specific infrastructure (demand). We calculated changes in flood protection between 2002 and 2015 at the local government area scale and for each beneficiary sector. Using counterfactual scenarios, we identified whether changes in flood protection were driven by forest loss or changes in the extent of infrastructure at risk of flooding. We found net declines in flood protection for all sectors. Urban residents experienced the greatest decline (28%), followed by rural communities (15%), and the food sector (14%). Overall declines in flood protection across the whole region were driven primarily by forest loss. However, for some local government areas and beneficiaries, changes in flood protection were also driven by increases in forest cover or spatial changes in demand. Recognition that beneficiary sectors can be impacted via different drivers of change is fundamental to revealing highly impacted sectors. In turn, this information can be used to develop management strategies to address inequalities in the distribution of ecosystem services among beneficiaries.

Projected losses of ecosystem services in the US disproportionately affect non-white and lower-income populations

Addressing how ecosystem services (ES) are distributed among groups of people is critical for making conservation and environmental policy-making more equitable. Here, we evaluate the distribution and equity of changes in ES benefits across demographic and socioeconomic groups in the United States (US) between 2020 and 2100. Specifically, we use land cover and population projections to model potential shifts in the supply, demand, and benefits of the following ES: provision of clean air, protection against a vector-borne disease (West Nile virus), and crop pollination. Across the US, changes in ES benefits are unevenly distributed among socioeconomic and demographic groups and among rural and urban communities, but are relatively uniform across geographic regions. In general, non-white, lower-income, and urban populations disproportionately bear the burden of declines in ES benefits. This is largely driven by the conversion of forests and wetlands to cropland and urban land cover in counties where these populations are expected to grow. In these locations, targeted land use policy interventions are required to avoid exacerbating inequalities already present in the US.

Research effort devoted to regulating and supporting ecosystem services by environmental scientists and economists

The economic valuation of ecosystem services in part reflects the desire to use conventional economic tools (markets and economic instruments) to conserve ecosystem services. However, for regulating and supporting ecosystem services that depend on ecosystem structure and function, estimation of economic value requires estimates of the current level of underlying ecological functions first. This primary step is in principle, the job of environmental scientists, not economists. Here, we provide a coarse-level quantitative assessment of the relationship between the research effort expended by environmental scientists (on the biophysical values) and economists (on the monetary values) on 15 different regulating and supporting services in 32 ecosystem types using peer-reviewed article hits retrieved from bibliographic databases as a measure of research effort. We find a positive, moderately strong (r = 0.69) correlation between research efforts in the two domains, a result that, while encouraging, is likely to reflect serendipity rather than the deliberate design of integrated environmental science-economics research programs. Our results suggest that compared to environmental science research effort economic valuation is devoted to a smaller, less diverse set of ecosystem services but a broader, more diverse, set of ecosystem types. The two domains differed more with respect to the ecosystem services that are the major focus of research effort than they did with respect to the ecosystem types of principal research interest. For example, carbon sequestration, erosion regulation, and nutrient cycling receive more relative research effort in the environmental sciences; air quality regulation in economic valuations. For both domains, cultivated areas, wetlands, and urban/semi-urban ecosystem types received relatively large research effort, while arctic and mountain tundra, cave and subterranean, cryosphere, intertidal/littoral zone, and kelp forest ecosystem types received negligible research effort. We suggest ways and means by which the field of sustainability science may be improved by the design and implementation of a searchable database of environmental science and economic valuation literature as well as a global ecosystem service research network and repository that explicitly links research on the estimation and prediction of biophysical ecosystem functions with that of the social sciences and other knowledge systems. These suggestions would, at least in principle, facilitate a more efficient research agenda between economists and environmental scientists and aid management, regulatory and judicial decision-makers.

Valuation and Appreciation of Biodiversity: The “Maintenance of Options” Provided by the Variety of Life

“Nature’s contributions to people” (NCP) is an important expansion beyond the standard ecosystem services framework, particularly as a pathway to better address global/regional biodiversity values. NCP18, “maintenance of options,” refers broadly to the capacity of ecosystems, habitats, species, or genotypes to keep options open to support a good quality of life. “Biodiversity,” interpreted as living variation, is an important, but under-appreciated, aspect of “maintenance of options.” IPBES refers to “the “option values of biodiversity,” that is, the value of maintaining living variation in order to provide possible future uses and benefits.” IPBES assessments include biodiversity option value, and use phylogenetic diversity (PD) as an indicator of change in status of NCP18. At the same time, IPBES notes the need for greater appreciation of option values of biodiversity. Popular ecosystem services framings forget the long history of consideration of these global benefits of biotic diversity to humanity, and their normative links. Popular ecological definitions mean that many current valuations of “biodiversity” neglect the benefits of biodiversity-as-variety. Economic valuations of “biodiversity” typically have focused on ecosystem aspects, not variety; related ecosystems framings value “biodiversity” with a focus on those critical elements relating to functioning of ecosystems. Greater appreciation of biodiversity option value and NCP18 may depend on clearer messaging from academia, better highlighting of the link between biodiversity and intergenerational justice, and greater communication of stories of past surprising discoveries of benefits from species that highlight biodiversity as an ongoing source of future benefits. An important pathway for better appreciation of insurance and investment benefits of variety is to understand and communicate the reasons why we value these benefits from variety. Biodiversity-as-variety is valued because we care about the welfare of future generations.

Limited Economic-Ecological Trade-Offs in a Shifting Agricultural Landscape: A Case Study From Kern County, California

Increasing global food production and livelihoods while maintaining ecosystem health will require significant changes in the way existing farming landscapes are managed. To this end, developing a systemic understanding of the economic and ecological impacts of different cropping systems, and identifying trade-offs and synergies between them, is crucial to inform decision-making for policy makers and landowners. Here, we investigate the impacts of agricultural land-use change for 15 distinct crops in Kern County, California, by looking at spatial and temporal changes in ecosystem indicators. We focus our analysis on three agricultural ecosystem pressures (water use, soil erosion, and pesticide use) and three agricultural ecosystem services (profits, calorie production, and C sequestration). Between 2002 and 2018, agriculture in Kern County underwent a shift from annual row crop to nut tree crop production. At the landscape-scale, we found high increases in ecosystem service provision (total profits, calorie production, and annual C sequestration increased by 105, 29, and 37%, respectively), coupled with smaller changes in ecosystem pressures (total soil erosion and evapotranspiration increased by 10 and 5%, respectively, and total pesticide use declined by 4%). We identified no salient trade-offs or synergies among crops. Our results illustrate that in the highly productive agricultural hotspot of Kern County, a combination of changes in land-cover allocation or land-use efficiency may have mitigated stronger negative environmental impacts following a broad shift from annual to perennial crops.

Who Pays the Bill? Assessing Ecosystem Services Losses in an Urban Planning Context

While Ecosystem Services (ES) are crucial for sustaining human wellbeing, urban development can threaten their sustainable supply. Following recent EU directives, many countries in Europe are implementing laws and regulations to protect and improve ES at local and regional levels. However, urban planning regulations already consider mandatory compensation for the loss of nature, and this compensation is often restricted to replacing green with green in other locations. This situation might lead to the loss of ES in areas subject to urban development, a loss that would eventually be replaced elsewhere. Therefore, ES assessments should be included in urban planning to improve the environmental conditions of urban landscapes where development takes place. Using an actual planning and development example that involves a proposed road to a restructured former industrial area in Bochum, Germany, we developed an ad-hoc assessment to compare a standard environmental compensation approach applying ES. We evaluated the impact of the planned construction alternatives with both approaches. In a second step, we selected the alternative with a lower impact and estimated the ES losses from the compensation measures. Our findings show that an ES assessment provides a solid basis for the selection of development alternatives, the identification of compensation areas, and the estimation of compensation amounts, with the benefit of improving the environmental quality of the affected areas. Our method was effective in strengthening urban planning, using ES science in the assessment and evaluation of urban development alternatives.

Assessing People’s Values of Nature: Where Is the Link to Sustainability Transformations?

The efforts to measure people’s current preferences and values of ecosystem services raise questions about the link to sustainability transformations. The importance of taking social and cultural values of nature into account is increasingly recognised within ecosystem services research and policy. This notion is informing the development and application of social (or socio-cultural) valuation methods that seek to assess and capture non-material social and cultural aspects of benefits of ecosystems in non-monetary terms. Here, ‘values’ refer to the products of descriptive scientific assessments of the links between human well-being and ecosystems. This precise use of the values term can be contrasted with normative modes of understanding values, as underlying beliefs and moral principles about what is good and right, which also influence science and institutions. While both perspectives on values are important for the biodiversity and ecosystem services agenda, values within this space have mainly been understood in relation to assessments and descriptive modes of values. Failing to acknowledge the distinction between descriptive and normative modes bypasses the potential mismatch between people’s current values and sustainability transformations. Refining methodologies to more accurately describe social values risks simply giving us a more detailed account of what we already know—people in general do not value nature enough. A central task for values studies is to explore why or how peoples’ mindsets might converge with sustainability goals, using methods that go beyond assessing current states to incorporate change and transformation.