In the US Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wide Fund for Nature and many other environmental organisations, it is standard practice to evaluate particular woods, wetlands and other such places on the basis of the ‘ecosystem services’ they are thought to provide. I argue that this practice cannot account for one important way in which places are of value to human beings. When they play integral roles in our lives, particular places have a kind of value which cannot (...) be adequately conceived in terms of service provision. Since it is in this respect limited, the ecosystem services framework can, I suggest, be criticised on grounds of justice. (shrink)

Ecosystems services are provisions that humans derive from nature. Ecologists trying to value ecosystems have proposed five categories of these services: preserving, supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural. While this ecosystem services framework attributes 'material' value to nature, sacred natural sites are areas of 'non-material' spiritual significance to people. Can we reconcile the material and non-material values? Ancient classical traditions recognise five elements of nature: earth, water, air, fire and ether. This commentary demonstrates that the perceived properties (...) of these elements correspond with the ecosystem services framework. Whilst the two can be reconciled, the 'elements of nature' framework is argued to be more suitable to make a case for conservation of sacred natural sites because it can be attractive to traditional societies whilst being acceptable to Western science. (shrink)

This paper is a preliminary treatment of the categories of agency and dependence in the context of ecosystem services discourse. These categories are discussed in terms of critical categorial ontology in order to articulate adequately the nature of humankind’s dependence upon the nonhuman natural world, inadequately captured by ecosystem services discourse. Following Val Plumwood, this essay takes ecosystems services discourse as an example of one type of failure to discern various forms of agency as well (...) as dependence, and it goes on to define diffuse dependence as the relation that corresponds to the form of agency expressed through ecosystem services. (shrink)

As the increasing loss of ecosystem services severely affects life perspectives of today's poor and future populations, governing access to, and use of, ecosystem services in an intragenerational and intergenerational just way is an urgent issue. The author argues that theories of distributive justice should consider the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services. Three specific demands that a theory of distributive justice should fulfill to adequately cope with the distribution of access rights to (...) ecosystem services, and show that Rawls??A Theory of Justice? can be consistently extended to meet the identified demands. (shrink)

Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects thatmake risk managementand riskcommunication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem (...) class='Hi'>services. The results are used together with a reviewof different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective aswell as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted. (shrink)

Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Many of these services are provided outside the borders of the land where they are produced. This article investigates who is entitled to these non-excludable ecosystem services from a libertarian perspective. Taking a right-libertarian perspective, it is concluded that the beneficiaries generally hold the right to use non-excludable ecosystem services and the right to landowners not converting ecosystems. Landowners are only at liberty to convert (...) ecosystems if they appropriated their land before any beneficiary used the services and converted the ecosystems before or shortly after the beneficiaries started using the services. This means that the beneficiaries generally hold the right to compensation payments by the landowners in the event of service losses, instead of the landowners holding the right to payments for ecosystem services by the beneficiaries. Taking a left-libertarian perspective, it is concluded that landowners ought to pay for the non-excludable ecosystem services lost as a result of their activities as well as beneficiaries paying for the non-excludable ecosystem services they use. These payments are not made mutually, however, but to a central authority that distributes the returns to the community on an equal per capita basis. (shrink)

Community is the core spatial unit for evaluating sustainable development. However, single data and method seem inadequate for conducting a scientific, effective, and innovative sustainable evaluation of complex community units. In this study, we perform a sustainable-oriented land use scheme using multisource remote sensing, machine learning, and object-based postclassification refinement. Furthermore, we assess the sustainability of the traffic community by data-driven and combined housing, ecosystem services, and landscape configuration. The results indicated that the relationship between housing, ecosystem (...) services, and landscape pattern has obvious synergistic effects, although with dissimilar importance in different sustainability levels. High sustainability level is intensely coordinated with landscape configuration, medium sustainability level is more affected by ecosystem services, and low sustainability level is more related to housing. Community sustainability presents a significant spatial distribution. The communities of high sustainability level are mainly located in both sides of the Pearl River and emerging urban areas, while those of medium sustainability level are distributed sporadically in the study area and those of low sustainability level are concentrated in old towns. Community transformation cannot be accomplished at one step. Along with the continuous optimization of landscape configuration, the priority should be given to housing reconstruction and improvement of ecosystem services further. We provide scientific and effective data-based evidence for urban decision-makers by integrating the advantages of the Earth Observation System and multifactor analysis. (shrink)

This paper is about the practice of evaluating ecosystems on the basis of the cultural services they provide. My first aim is to assess the various objections that have been made to this practice. My second is to argue that when particular places are integral to people’s lives, their value cannot be adequately conceived in terms of the provision of cultural ecosystem services. It follows, I conclude, that the ecosystem services framework can provide only a (...) very limited account of the value of places. (shrink)

The failure to properly account forthe total value of environmental and natural resourcesresults in socially undesirable overexploitation anddegradation of complex ecosystems such as mangrovewetlands. However, most ecosystem valuation researchtoo often focuses on the question of “what is the value” and not enough on “what peoplevalue.” Nonmarket valuation practitioners have usedqualitative approaches in their work for some time.Yet, the relative strengths and weaknesses ofdifferent qualitative methods have been more thesubject of speculation than systematic research. Thestatistical examination of focus group and (...) individualinterview data on ecosystem services illustrates thatthe two methods generate important but differentecosystem service data. Further, the data show thatthe use of multiple data collection methods offers amore robust understanding of what people value. (shrink)

Biofuels have lately been indicated as a promising source of cheap and sustainable energy. In this paper we argue that some important ethical and environmental issues have also to be addressed: (1) the conflict between biofuels production and global food security, particularly in developing countries, and (2) the limits of the Human Appropriation of ecosystem services and Net Primary Productivity. We warn that large scale conversion of crops, grasslands, natural and semi-natural ecosystem, (such as the conversion of (...) grasslands to cellulosic ethanol production, or plantation of sugar cane and palm oil), may have detrimental social and ecological consequences. Social effects may concern: (1) food security, especially in developing countries, leading to an increase of the price of staple food, (2) transnational corporations and big landowners establishing larger and larger landholdings in conflict with indigenous areas and the subsistence of small farmers. Ecological effects may concern: (1) competition with grazing wild and domesticated animals (e.g., millions of grazing livestock in USA prairies), (2) an excessive appropriation of Net Primary Production from ecosystems, (3) threatening biodiversity preservation and soil fertility. We claim that is it well known how ecological and social issues are strictly interwoven and that large scale biofuels production, by putting high pressure on both fronts, may trigger dangerous feedbacks, also considering the critical fact that 9 billion people are expected to inhabit the planet by 2050. There is a need to conduct serious and deep analysis on the environmental and social impact of large scale biofuels production before important energy policies are launched at global level. Biofuels will not represent an energetic panacea and their role in the overall energy consumption will remain marginal in our present highly energivorous society, while their effect on food security and environment preservation may have detrimental results. We should also have the courage to face two key issues: (1) we cannot keep increasing resources consumption at present pace, and have to change our life style accordingly, and (2) we have to deal with population growth; we cannot expect to have 9–10 billions people inhabiting the earth by 2050, without this representing a major impact on its support system. (shrink)

This article examines the argument that biodiversity is crucial for well-functioning ecosystems and that such ecosystems provide important goods and services to our human societies, in short the ecosystem services argument. While the ESA can be a powerful argument for nature preservation, we argue that its dominant functionalist interpretation is confronted with three significant problems. First, the ESA seems unable to preserve the nature it claims to preserve. Second, the ESA cannot explain why those caring about nature (...) want to preserve it. Third, the ESA might undermine its own goal because it potentially decreases environmental motivations. (shrink)

This article describes and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity principle” as a guiding ethical value in forestry governance. Different trends in environmental management such as local participation, decentralization or global governance have emerged in the last two decades at the global, national and local level. This article suggests that the conscious or unconscious application of subsidiarity has been the ruling principle that has allocated the level at which tasks have been assigned to different agents. Based on this hypothesis this paper describes (...) the principle of subsidiarity and its application to environmental policies within forest governance and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity” principle as a critical conceptual tool for sustainable resource management. The paper explains as an example how “environmental subsidiarity” is the key principle that can link payment for ecosystem services (PES) with environmental public policies and applies this principle with all its political consequences to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) architecture. It concludes by showing how the adoption of “environmental subsidiarity” as a ethical principle could help to maximize benefits to all stakeholders involved in PES schemes such as REDD+. (shrink)

KATIE McSHANE | : Taking the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as representative, I argue that animal ethics has been neglected in the assessment of climate policy. While effects on ecosystem services, biodiversity, and human welfare are all catalogued quite carefully, there is no consideration at all of the effects of climate change on the welfare of animals. This omission, I argue, should bother us, for animal welfare is not adequately captured by assessments (...) of ecosystem services, biodiversity, or human welfare. After describing the paper’s assumptions and discussing the role of the IPCC’s Assessment Reports in climate policy, I consider the presentation of climate impacts in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, noting the aspects of animal welfare that are considered there, and comparing the report’s treatment of animal welfare to its treatment of human welfare. Next, I argue that the concepts of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and human welfare do not adequately capture the welfare of animals. Finally, I discuss concerns about human responsibility for animal welfare and the practicality of including considerations of animal welfare among the climate impacts studied by the IPCC. | : En prenant le Cinquième Rapport d’évaluation du Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat à titre de cas représentatif, je soutiens que l’éthique animale a été négligée dans l’évaluation de la politique climatique. Alors que les effets sur les services écosystémiques, la biodiversité et le bien-être humain y sont tous soigneusement recensés, les effets du changement climatique sur le bien-être des animaux n’y sont aucunement pris en considération. Je soutiens que cette omission devrait nous préoccuper, étant donné que l’évaluation des services écosystémiques, de la biodiversité et du bien-être humain ne rend pas compte adéquatement du bien-être des animaux. Après avoir décrit les présupposés de l’article et réfléchi au rôle des Rapports d’évaluation du GIEC quant à la politique climatique, j’examine la présentation des effets climatiques dans le Cinquième Rapport du GIEC, en indiquant les aspects du bien-être animal qui y sont pris en considération, tout en comparant le traitement que fait le rapport du bien-être animal à celui qui est fait du bien-être humain. Ensuite, je soutiens que les concepts de services écosystémiques, de biodiversité et de bien-être humain ne reflètent pas adéquatement le bien-être des animaux. Enfin, je traite des problèmes potentiels liés à la responsabilité humaine relativement au bien-être des animaux ainsi que de la faisabilité d’inclure des considérations liées au bien-être animal parmi les effets climatiques étudiés par le GIEC. (shrink)

Researchers working in the field of ecosystem services have long acknowledged the importance of recognising multiple values in ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet the operationalisation of value pluralism in ES assessments remains largely elusive. The aim of this research is to present a taxonomy of values and valuation methods to widen the evaluative space for ES. First, we present our preanalytic positions in regards to the values and valuation of ES. Second, we review different value definitions that we deem (...) relevant for the discussion of ES valuation. Third, we propose a taxonomy of ES values based on different conceptions of human-nature relationships. Finally, we present a taxonomy of different methods that can be used to recognise plural values in ES. This taxonomy for a plural valuation can help ES scientists and practitioners with their aim of representing people's multiple and context-specific ways of valuing nature. The taxonomy can also serve to pay broader attention to ES values that are overlooked or misrepresented in assessments that restrict their focus to monetary valuations. (shrink)

In the presence of anthropogenic climate change, gross environmental degradation, and mass abject poverty, many political theorists currently debate issues such as people's right to water, the right to food, and the distribution of rights to natural resources more generally. However, thus far many theorists either focus (somewhat arbitrarily) only on one particular resource (e.g. water) or they treat all natural resources alike, meaning that many relevant distinctions within the group of natural resources are overlooked. Hence, the paper will start (...) with an analysis of the various forms which natural resources can take and how this might influence one's conception of resource rights. In so doing, the paper argues that we have to carefully distinguish between the actual physical resources people might control and how we distribute these, and the life-sustaining benefits each and every person draws from sustainable and functioning ecosystems. Based on this distinction, the paper will argue for a right to the benefits of life-sustaining ecosystem services as a universal basic right every person has. Further distributive claims with respect to particular physical resources would thus be limited by the requirements of such a basic right. (shrink)

The productive services of nature, such as the ability of fertile soil to grow crops, receive low market prices not because markets fail but because many natural resources, such as good cropland, are abundant relative to effective demand. Even when one pays nothing for a service such as that the wind provides in pollinating crops, this is its 'correct' market price if the supply is adequate and free. The paper argues that ecological services are either too 'lumpy' to (...) price in incremental units, priced competitively, or too cheap to meter. The paper considers counter-examples and objections. (shrink)

This paper draws on ideas about policy innovation and adaptation to assess the extent to which ‘payments for ecosystem services’ can be seen as a challenge to traditionally more bureaucratic, state-centered ways of paying for the provisioning of environmental goods from agricultural landscapes through agri environmental policy. Focussing on recent experience in the United States and the UK, the paper documents the extent to which PES is now an established term of reference in AEP research and debate in (...) both countries and postulates that this may usher in a new discourse of environmental provisioning in agriculture. The PES landscape is, however, currently highly fragmented and largely experimental, with ‘PES-like’ approaches being piloted in the field through partnerships between state agencies and localized private and charitable interests. State-supported AEP programs remain substantially intact, and rather than any displacement of state action, there appears to be a more gradual insertion of PES approaches and metrics into standard AEP operating procedures. This institutional stickiness is partly due to the continuing difficulty of agreeing the metrics necessary for measuring outcomes but may also be due to the politically well defended nature of traditional AEP entitlements and associated policy networks. We conclude by suggesting a need for further research to better understand these specifically political constraints and sources of resistance to PES and the ambiguous consequences for institutions, policy networks, rural communities and environment. (shrink)

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a multi-phase interactive process among a set of scientists, policy makers, land managers, and community representatives, so as to facilitate communication, mutual understanding, and participative decision making. This was part of the Ecosystem Services Project in Australia. The project sought to broaden public understanding about the natural ecosystems in Australia. The study reported here pertains to one of the project sites--the Goulburn Broken catchment, a highly productive agricultural watershed in (...) the south-east of Australia. The paper demonstrates how, starting from a condition of diversity of ideas and interests among the participants, systematic dialogue and mutual learning could be generated, leading to identification of options for more sustainable land management practices. The concept of "ecosystem services" was used as an integrative tool across disciplines and community perspectives. The concept of scenarios was used to encourage future-focussed thinking among the participants. The idea of "stakeholder jury" was used to promote deliberation. A process of multi-criteria evaluation was used to facilitate convergence of viewpoints, through informed trade-offs and compromises. This experience led to the development of a process for integration research, which helped in harmonising across diverse understandings and values in a transparent and structured manner. (shrink)

The concept of ecosystem services is a way of visualizing the instrumental value that nature has for human beings. Most ecosystem services can be performed by more than one species. This fact is sometimes used as an argument against the preservation of species. However, even though substitutability does detract from the instrumental value of a species, it also adds option value to it. The option value cannot make a substitutable species as instrumentally valuable as a non-substitutable (...) species, but in many cases, it can add enough value to make the species more valuable than the projects that threaten its existence. (shrink)

Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This (...) becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature on the one hand and ethics and sacralizations on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected. (shrink)

A line of research is emerging investigating the private sector impacts and dependencies on critical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and related business risks and opportunities. While the ecosystem services narrative is being forwarded globally as a key paradigm for promoting business sustainability, there is scarce knowledge of how these issues are considered at managerial level. This study thus investigates managerial views of corporate sustainability after the ecosystem services concept. We analyse interviews conducted with 20 (...) managers from domestic and international forestry companies operating with a plantation-based business model in China. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data, with a focus on four key areas: interviewee familiarity with the ecosystem services concept; their views of corporate dependencies and impacts on ecosystem services; related business risks and opportunities; and viability of existing instruments and practices that can be employed in detecting and addressing business impacts and dependencies on ecosystem services. Through an inductive approach to the empirical findings, we refined a framework that holds operational value for developing company response strategies to ecosystem services impact/dependence assessment, ensuring that all issues are addressed comprehensively, and that related risks and opportunities are properly acknowledged. (shrink)

As scholars have shown, acceptance is key to the success of Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme. While many studies adopt a static cost-benefit perspective, few address the social process leading to acceptance. Drawing on Suchman, this article examines the legitimacy process underlying the acceptance of a PES in agriculture. In particular, the role of collective action in the legitimisation process is analysed, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of discourse analysis. Data from an agro-environmental PES scheme (...) in France on water quality shows that acceptance depends on the normative and cognitive legitimacy that actors confer upon a public policy. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of social learning in the governance of the forest ecosystem service through a case study that involves forest groups in Flanders, Belgium, where social learning has generated significant results within a short period. The case study specifically focuses on three social learning mechanisms extensively used in managing social-ecological systems. These mechanisms include a monitoring strategy based on sustainability criteria and indicators as a liberal learning device, experimenting with disruptive action strategies, and involving new stakeholders (...) in the learning process. The forest groups focus on instrumental and social trust to create trust between the government and the forest owners. Multifunctional forest management is the most effective strategy of extending forest-based services in Flanders. These strategies have produced significant results in Flanders in a short period. (shrink)

The Argument Web is maturing as both a platform built upon a synthesis of many contemporary theories of argumentation in philosophy and also as an ecosystem in which various applications and application components are contributed by different research groups around the world. It already hosts the largest publicly accessible corpora of argumentation and has the largest number of interoperable and cross compatible tools for the analysis, navigation and evaluation of arguments across a broad range of domains, languages and activity (...) types. Such interoperability is key in allowing innovative combinations of tool and data reuse that can further catalyse the development of the field of computational argumentation. The aim of this paper is to summarise the key foundations, the recent advances and the goals of the Argument Web, with a particular focus on demonstrating the relevance to, and roots in, philosophical argumentation theory. (shrink)

Monetary valuation of ecosystem services is a widely used approach to quantify the benefits supplied by the natural environment to society. An alternative approach is the monetary valuation of ecosystem functions, which is defined as the capacity of the ecosystem to supply services. Using two European case-study areas, this paper explores the relative advantages of the two valuation approaches. This is done using a conceptual analysis, a qualitative application, and an overall comparison of both approaches. (...) It is concluded that both approaches can be defended on theoretical grounds, and – if properly applied – will provide the same value estimates. However, valuation of ecosystem services is preferred from a practical point of view. Because there is no one-to-one match between functions and services, researchers should be consistent in their valuation approach. To avoid overlooking or overlapping of values, valuation should either be solely based on functions, or solely based on services. (shrink)

Jonathan Newman, Gary Varner, and Stefan Linquist’s Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics is a critical examination of a panoply of arguments for conserving biodiversity. Their discussion is extremely impressive though I think one can push back on some of their criticisms. In this essay, I consider their criticisms of the argument for conserving biodiversity based on ecosystem services; specifically, ecosystem functioning. In the end, I try to clarify and defend this argument against their criticisms.

There is considerable discussion about the nature of the health metaphor as applied to ecosystems. One does not need to accept the analogy of ecosystem as 'organism' to reap insight into the diagnosis of ecosystem ills by applications of approaches pioneered in the health sciences. Ecosystem health can be assessed by the presence or absence of signs ecosystem distress, by direct measures of ecosystem resilience or counteractive capacity, and by evaluation of risks or threats from (...) human activity and natural forces which may decrease the supply of ecological services. The focus of this essay is on what is and what is not implied by the ecosystem health metaphor. It also elaborates a research agenda for this emerging transdiciplinary science. One can argue that beyond the metaphor is the potential for systematic diagnosis of ecosystem ills, development of indicators of ecosystem health, development of early warning indicators of ecosystem dysfunction, development of diagnostic protocols and preventive strategies for maintaining ecological services. (shrink)

Ecosystems are increasingly characterised as goods and services to allow their valuation in monetary terms. This follows an orthodox economic approach to environmental values, but is also being undertaken by ecologists and conservation biologists. There then appears a lack of clarity and debate as to the model of human behaviour, specific values and decision process being adopted. Arguments for ecosystems service valuation are critically appraised and the case for a model leading to value pluralism is presented. The outcome is (...) to identify the need for value articulating processes which involve open deliberative judgment rather than instantaneously stated preferences, concealed expert opinion and global cost-benefit analysis. (shrink)

Many ecological and environmental economists take a microeconomic approach to envi­ronmental valuation and view the macroeconomy as an amalgam of firms whose primary task is to efficiently allocate scarce resources. In this framework, replacing freely provided ecosystem services with costly human-provided substitutes is by definition inefficient. Although destroying and replacing the free gifts of nature can sometimes be an economic benefit, in the case of apple-tree pollination in Maoxian County, China, the positive economic benefits do not justify eliminating (...) the natural processes. To the contrary, the Maoxian case illustrates the danger of allowing the logic of the market and its apologetic models to drive conservation policy. The conflict between the market economy and the natural world must be recognized and addressed in a more substantial way. The bees of Maoxian County are a parable for the relationship between humans and the natural world and show clearly the danger of leaving the fate of nature to the whims of the markets even if prices are “corrected.”. (shrink)

Social media has become an important way for science communication. Some scholars have examined how to help scientists engage with social media from operational training, policy guidance, and social media services improving. The main contribution of this study is to construct a symbiosis evolution model of science communication ecosystem between scientists and social media platforms based on the symbiosis theory and the Lotka–Volterra model to discuss the evolution of their symbiotic patterns and population size under different symbiosis coefficients. (...) The results indicate that the size of the symbiosis coefficients determines the equilibrium outcome of the symbiosis evolution of scientists and social media platforms; scientists and social media platforms can promote each other’s population size under the mutualism pattern, which can achieve sustainable science communication; “1 + 1 > 2” effect can only be achieved under the symmetric mutualism pattern and the growth of scientists and social media platforms is more stable and sufficient than that of other patterns. The findings will provide additional perspectives for promoting the sustainable development of science communication based on social media. (shrink)

Experience has shown that the application of ethical guidelines developed for research in developed countries to research in developing countries can be, and often is, impractical and raises a number of contentious issues. Various attempts have been made to provide guidelines more appropriate to the developing world context; however, to date these efforts have been dominated by the fields of bioscience, medical research and nutrition. There is very little advice available for those seeking to undertake collaborative social science or natural (...) science research in developing countries and what is there tends to be held within disparate sources. Charting the development of a set of ethics documentation for future use by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme research community, this paper outlines past and present attitudes towards ethics procedures amongst this community and suggests ways in which ethics procedures might be made more relevant and user-friendly to researchers working in this area. (shrink)

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services have recently launched themselves as the UN-sanctioned instrument for conserving nature. They seek to establish themselves as the authority in this field alongside the well-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in climate science. Quickly following or even before recent publication of their conceptual framework in two biology journals, they were already underway building upon it. This headlong push, we believe, is ill advised. We show how the framework is unsound as (...) a foundation for further work—in a number of ways and perhaps even by its authors’ own lights. It is therefore urgent that the IPBES thoroughly and thoughtfully reconsider their framework before too much effort is wasted. (shrink)

Many ecological economists have argued that some natural capital should be preserved for posterity. Yet, among environmental philosophers, the preservation paradox entails that preserving parts of nature, including those denoted by natural capital, is impossible. The paradox claims that nature is a realm of phenomena independent of intentional human agency, that preserving and restoring nature require intentional human agency, and, therefore, no one can preserve or restore nature (without making it artificial). While this article argues that the preservation paradox is (...) more difficult to resolve than ordinarily recognized, it also concludes by sketching a positive way to understand what it means to preserve natural capital during the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response. By studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward GHG emissions, the findings suggest that both “inside out” and “outside in” actions are taken in response to climate (...) change. While attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions, evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well. The results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention, structural controls, and industry type. (shrink)

While many recognize that rigid historical and compositional goals are inadequate in a world where climate and other global systems are undergoing unprecedented changes, others contend that promoting ecosystem services and functions encourages practices that can ultimately lower the bar of ecological management. These worries are foregrounded in discussions about Novel Ecosystems (NEs); where some researchers and conservationists claim that NEs provide a license to trash nature as long as some ecosystem services are provided. This criticism (...) arises from what we call the " anything goes " problem created by the release of historical conditions. After explaining the notion of NE, we identify numerous substantive motivations for worrying about the anything-goes-problem and then go on to show the problem can be solved by correcting two mistaken assumptions. In short, we argue that the problem is a product of adopting an overly sparse functional perspective and one that assumes an unrealistically high degree of convergence in the trajectories of natural processes. Our analysis illuminates why such assumptions are unwarranted. Finally, we further argue that adopting an appropriate ethical framework is essential to overcoming the anything-goes-problem and suggest that a certain virtue ethics conception of ecological management provides useful resources for framing and resolving the problem. (shrink)

Our food and farming system is not socially, economically or ecologically sustainable. Many of the ills are a result of market competition driving specialization and linear production models, externalizing costs for environmental, social and cultural degradation. Some propose that market mechanisms should be used to correct this; improved consumer choice, internalization of costs and compensation to farmers for public goods. What we eat is determined by the path taken by our ancestors, by commercialization and fierce competition, fossil fuels and demographic (...) development. Based on those, governments and the food industry are the choice architects who determine what we eat; consumer choice plays a marginal role. Using market mechanisms to internalize cost and compensate farmers for public goods has been proposed for decades but little progress has been made. There are also many practical, ethical and theoretical objections to such a system. The market is not a good master for a sustainable food system. Instead we need to find new ways of managing the food system based on food as a right and farming as a management system of the planet Earth. The solutions should be based on relocalization of food production and de-commodification of food and our symbionts, the plants and animals we eat. (shrink)

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services : global justice between different people of the present generation ; justice between people of different generations. Three hypotheses about their relationship — independency, facilitation and rivalry — are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity (...) and quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions. (shrink)

The normative aim of environmental justice poses two challenges to the management of agricultural systems: improvement of access for today's rural poor to vital ecosystem services ; and sustenance of critical ecosystem funds to enable future persons access to vital ecosystem services. The paper investigates whether, and how, these justices have been simultaneously enhanced by the Philippine farmer network MASIPAG. It compares evaluation data on MASIPAG and conventional farming systems within a normative framework based on (...) the justice conceptions by Rawls and Sen, and analyses the impact of certain determinants on both justices. (shrink)

In the United States, interest in urban agriculture has grown dramatically. While community gardens have sprouted across the landscape, home food gardens—arguably an ever-present, more durable form of urban agriculture—have been overlooked, understudied, and unsupported by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academics. In part a response to the invisibility of home gardens, this paper is a manifesto for their study in the Global North. It seeks to develop a multi-scalar and multidisciplinary research framework that acknowledges the garden’s social and ecological (...) or material dimensions. Given the lack of existing research, we draw on the more extensive literature on home gardens in the South and community gardens in the North to develop a set of hypotheses about the social-ecological effects of urban home food gardens in the North. These gardens, we hypothesize, contribute to food security, community development, cultural reproduction, and resilience at multiple scales; conserve agrobiodiversity; and support urban biodiversity. They may also have negative ecological effects, such as stormwater nutrient loading. Because of the entanglement of the social and the ecological or material in the garden, we review three theoretical perspectives—social ecological systems theory, actor-network theory, and assemblage theory—that have been or could be applied to the multi-scalar and multidisciplinary study of the garden. We also review sampling and analytic methods for conducting home garden research. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities to extend the research agenda beyond descriptive analysis, the primary focus of garden research to date. (shrink)

Contributing to the cultural ecosystem services literature, this paper draws on the in-depth place narratives of two coastal case-study sites in Wales to explore how people experience and understand landscape change in relation to their sense of place, and what this means for their wellbeing. Our place narratives reveal that participants understand coastal/intertidal landscapes as complex socio-ecological systems filled with competing legitimate claims that are difficult to manage. Such insights suggest that a focus on diachronic integrity within place (...) narratives might offer a route to more socially and culturally acceptable environmental management strategies. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding “wild” land as terra nullius emerged during historical colonialism, entered international law, and became entrenched in national constitutions and cultural mores around the world. This has perpetuated an unsustainable and unjust human relationship to land no longer tenable in the post-Lockean era of land scarcity and ecological degradation. Environmental conservation, by valuing wild lands, challenges the terra nullius assumption of the vulnerability of unused lands to encroachment, while indigenous groups reasserting their rights to communal territories (...) likewise contest individual property rights. South American case studies illustrate routinized terra nullius prejudices. (shrink)

With increasing appreciation that the Y2K problem may turn out to have unpredictable and potentially far-reaching effects, we are faced with what in some ways resembles the looming global ecological crisis, only this time what is at stake are not vital ecosystem services but rather the vital structures of our highly complex socially constructed reality—and this time we have a date-certain deadline for the onset of the crisis. Regardless of what actually happens when the calendar turns from 1999 (...) to 2000, this period of waiting for the millennium bug can be a productive one if it induces some of us to contemplate what things we actually depend upon to sustain our lives and, utilizing John Searle's analysis, in what ways we might reconstruct our social reality if faced with the opportunity—and why we haven't begun to do so sooner. (shrink)

With increasing appreciation that the Y2K problem may turn out to have unpredictable and potentially far-reaching effects, we are faced with what in some ways resembles the looming global ecological crisis, only this time what is at stake are not vital ecosystem services but rather the vital structures of our highly complex socially constructed reality—and this time we have a date-certain deadline for the onset of the crisis. Regardless of what actually happens when the calendar turns from 1999 (...) to 2000, this period of waiting for the millennium bug can be a productive one if it induces some of us to contemplate what things we actually depend upon to sustain our lives and, utilizing John Searle's analysis, in what ways we might reconstruct our social reality if faced with the opportunity—and why we haven't begun to do so sooner. (shrink)

Technological advancement has an ambivalent character concerning the impact on biodiversity. It accounts for major detrimental environmental impacts and aggravates threads to biodiversity. On the other hand, from an application perspective of environmental science, there are technical advancements, which increase the potential of analysis, detection and monitoring of environmental changes and open a wider spectrum of sustainable use strategies.The concept of biodiversity emerged in the last two decades as a political issue to protect the structural and functional basis of earthbound (...) life. In this respect, it represents a great challenge for science, in particular for ecology, which is the scientific discipline mainly involved in contributing to understand biodiversity issues.In this paper, we state a strong necessity for ecologists to work in close connection with other disciplines and within their own discipline across the different organisation levels. Each level has some specific properties to which ecological terminology has been adapted, and joint views are necessary to understand complex networks. In this context, ecological theory provides the background to analyse biological complexity and the relationship of structure and dynamics on different integration levels and provides the interface to mediate social and political issues.Important features of new technologies for advances in ecological theory refer to an increase in information processing capacities, more efficient automatic data acquisition and device operation, and an increase in resolution.One crucial consideration we analyse is the trend that a quantitative development in one particular discipline may open a new potential for qualitative advancement in other disciplines when the quantitative advancement is applied in a new disciplinary context.We illustrate these qualitative developments that are based on technological advancements and which helped to advance ecological theory qualitatively with two examples: The underlying mechanisms causing regularly oscillating rodent populations are subject to a decade long discussion in ecology. Using the possibilities of modern information processing, it is possible to represent the discussed hypotheses in an integrative object oriented model and analyse how the underlying causal net works. The second example originates from biosafety research dealing with the environmental impact of genetically modified organisms. The project GenEERA develops a complex up-scaling procedure from below field-level information to the landscape scale in order to investigate spread and persistence of GM oil seed rape under different scenarios. The approach gives an example, how ecological modelling can be used to combine different information levels to derive conclusions on a higher spatial scale.In an overall conclusion we relate the described approaches to a wider system analytical context in which we interpret theory developments and biodiversity issues with a system theoretical description of growth processes. We obtain the view that in self-organising systems there is a tendency for autonomous development which tends to be dominating far away from capacity limitations. However, while approaching capacity limitations, a tendency towards closer coupling of internal and external cause-effect networks emerges. We also find that the relation of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and social dynamics can be interpreted in this framework. In this context, the demand for closer interdisciplinary cooperation to solve existing problems appears as an indication of emerging capacity limitations both, in the theoretical as well as in the physical domain. (shrink)