Ecosystems and Human Well-Being

A Manual for Assessment Practitioners

Neville Ash, Hernán Blanco, Keisha Garcia, Thomas Tomich, Bhaskar Vira, Monika Zurek, Claire Brown

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781597269056
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

Designed by a partnership of UN agencies, international scientific organizations, and development agencies, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is the most extensive study ever of the linkages between the world's ecosystems and human well-being. The goal of the MA is to establish the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being without undermining their long-term productivity. With contributions by more than 500 scientists from 70 countries, the MA has proven to be one of the most important conservation initiatives ever undertaken, and the ecosystem services paradigm on which it is based provides the standard for practice. This manual supplies the specific tools that practitioners of the paradigm need in order to extend their work into the future. The manual is a stand-alone "how to" guide to conducting assessments of the impacts on humans of ecosystem changes. In addition, assessment practitioners who are looking for guidance on particular aspects of the assessment process will find individual chapters of this manual to be useful in advancing their understanding of best practices in ecosystem assessment. The manual builds on the experiences and lessons learned from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment global and sub-global assessment initiatives, with chapters written by well-known participants in those initiatives. It also includes insights and experiences gained from a wider range of ecosystem service-focused assessment activities since the completion of the MA in 2005.

1

Assessing Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, and Human Well-being

Neville Ash, Karen Bennett, Walter Reid, Frances Irwin, Janet Ranganathan, Robert Scholes, Thomas P. Tomich, Claire Brown, Habiba Gitay, Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, and Marcus Lee

What is this chapter about?

This chapter provides an overview of the process and components of scientific assessments that have as their focus or include within their scope the connections between ecosystems and people. It introduces ecosystem services as the link between ecosystems and human well-being and therefore as the focus of assessing the consequences of ecosystem changes for people. The chapter introduces and highlights the relationship between the various components of assessment. In doing so, it provides an introduction and roadmap to the subsequent chapters of the manual.

1.1 Introduction

Section’s take-home messages

• This manual can be used as a whole document, or individual chapters can help assessment practitioners who are looking for guidance on particular aspects of the process.
• Assessments are not just about the findings. Getting the process right, from the early stages of design through to the communication of findings, is essential in order to have an impact.

This manual is a stand-alone “how-to” guide about conducting an assessment of the consequences of ecosystem change for people. However, the manual also relates closely to other recent publications, particularly Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers (WRI 2008), which presents methods for public-sector decision makers to use information on ecosystem services to strengthen economic and social development policies and strategies. This manual can be used as a whole document, or individual chapters can help assessment practitioners who are looking for guidance on particular aspects of the process. The manual builds on the experiences and lessons learned from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) global assessment and from over 30 ongoing or completed sub-global assessment initiatives at a range of scales, including local, national, and regional assessments. (See www.MAweb.org for further details on the MA and the various follow-up activities currently under way.) It also includes insight and experiences gained from a wider range of assessment activities focused on ecosystem services.

The chapter begins with an overview of such assessments—what they are and why they are useful—and then provides a summary of the step-by-step process for conducting an assessment. Drawing on both theory and best practice from the field and on a range of global and sub-global assessments, the chapter highlights the importance not just of the findings of an assessment but also of the process itself. Getting the process right, from the early stages of design through to the communication of findings, is essential in order to have an impact on the intended audience.

This manual has been written to support integrated ecosystem assessment practitioners. However, it is essential that the assessment practitioner also understand the decision-making context in which the study is being conducted and into which the findings may be taken on board. As such, the chapter concludes with a short section on how assessments can be considered in the context of the decision-making process and how the focus and impact of an assessment will depend on what stage an issue is in its policy life cycle.

Subsequent chapters in the manual elaborate on the material presented here and address key aspects of the assessment process: engaging stakeholders; developing and using a conceptual framework; conducting assessments of conditions and trends in ecosystems, their services, and human well-being; developing scenarios of change for ecosystems, their services, and human well-being; and assessing responses or interventions that aim to improve the management of ecosystems for people. Figure 1.1 outlines the main contents and layout of this manual, and shows how key sections of the manual relate.

1.2 How to improve decision making using ecosystem assessments

Section’s take-home messages

• An ecosystem services assessment can help build a bridge between the development and environmental communities by providing credible and robust information on the links between ecosystem management and the attainment of economic and social goals.
• As improvements are made in describing and valuing the benefits of ecosystem services, decision makers can better understand how their actions might change these services, consider the trade-offs among options, and choose policies that sustain the appropriate mix of services.
• Successful assessments share three basic features: they are credible, legitimate, and relevant to decision makers’ needs.

People everywhere depend on ecosystems for their well-being. Ecosystems are the source of obvious necessities such as food and fresh water, but they also provide less obvious services such as flood protection, pollination, and the decomposition of organic waste. The natural world provides spiritual and recreational benefits as well. These and other benefits of the world’s ecosystems have supported the extraordinary growth and progress of human societies. Yet the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that the majority of ecosystem services are in a state of decline and can no longer be taken for granted. Ignoring the links between ecosystems and human well-being in public and private decision making puts at risk our ability to achieve long-term development goals. An assessment of ecosystem services provides the connection between environmental issues and people. Thus, decision makers—including those whose goals and actions are focused on people, society, and economics—can benefit from examining the extent to which achieving their goals depends on ecosystem services (see Table 1.1).

Figure 1.1. Contents and layout of the manual.

Reconciling economic development and nature is challenging because they have traditionally been viewed in isolation or even in opposition, and the full extent of humanity’s dependence on nature’s benefits, or ecosystem services, is seldom taken into account by development or environmental communities. An ecosystem services assessment can help build a bridge between the development and environmental communities by providing credible and robust information on the links between ecosystem management and the attainment of economic and social goals. This can mean the difference between a successful strategy and one that fails because of an unexamined consequence, for example for a freshwater supply, an agricultural product, a sacred site, or another ecosystem service (see Box 1.1).

Table 1.1. Linking development goals and ecosystem services

Goal	Dependence on ecosystem services
Health	Ecosystem services such as food production, water purification, and disease regulation are vital in reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating diseases. In addition, changes in ecosystems can influence the abundance of human pathogens, resulting in outbreaks of diseases such as malaria and cholera and the emergence of new diseases.
Natural hazard protection	Increasingly, people live in areas that are vulnerable to extreme events such as floods, severe storms, fires, and droughts (MA 2005:443). The condition of ecosystems affects the likelihood and the severity of extreme events by, for example, regulating global and regional climates. Healthy ecosystems can also lessen the impact of extreme events by regulating floods or protecting coastal communities from storms and hurricanes.
Adaptation to climate change	Climate change alters the quantity, quality, and timing of ecosystem service flows such as fresh water and food. These changes create vulnerabilities for those individuals, communities, and sectors that depend on the services. Healthy ecosystems can reduce climate change impacts. Vegetation provides climateregulating services by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ecosystem services such as water and erosion regulation, natural hazard protection, and pest control can help protect communities from climate-induced events such as increased floods, droughts, and pest outbreaks.
Freshwater provision	Ecosystems help meet peoples’ need for water by regulating the water cycle, filtering impurities from water, and regulating the erosion of soil into water. Population growth and economic development have led to rapid water resource development, however, and many naturally occurring and functioning systems have been replaced with highly modified and human-engineered systems. Needs for irrigation, domestic water, power, and transport are met at the expense of rivers, lakes, and wetlands that offer recreation, scenic values, and the maintenance of fisheries, biodiversity, and long-term water cycling.
Environmental conservation	Conservation projects often only consider a few benefits of nature’s preservation. An ecosystem services framework can help build support for these projects by clarifying that their success provides multiple ecosystem services and therefore is linked to the achievement of other development goals. If a protected area, for example, can be shown to have additional benefits such as providing biochemicals for pharmaceuticals, its creation is more likely to be supported.
Food production	Ecosystems are vital to food production, yet there is pressure to increase agricultural outputs in the short term at the expense of ecosystems’ long-term capacity for food production. Intensive use of ecosystems to satisfy needs for food can erode ecosystems through soil degradation, water depletion, contamination, collapse of fisheries, or biodiversity loss.
Poverty reduction	The majority of the world’s 1 billion poorest people live in rural areas. They depend directly on nature for their livelihoods and well-being: food production, freshwater availability, and hazard protection from storms, among other services. Degradation of these services can mean starvation and death. Investments in ecosystem service maintenance and restoration can enhance rural livelihoods and be a stepping stone out of poverty.
Energy security	Many renewable energy sources, such as biofuels or hydroelectric power, are derived from ecosystems and depend on nature’s ability to maintain them. Hydropower, for example, relies on regular water flow as well as erosion control, both of which depend on intact ecosystems.

Source: WRI 2008.

Undertaking an ecosystem services assessment and taking the findings into account in policies and action can improve the long-term outcome of decisions. As improvements are made in describing and valuing the benefits of ecosystem services, decision makers can better understand how their actions might change these services, consider the trade-offs among options, and choose policies that sustain the appropriate mix of services. A range of assessment initiatives in recent years have focused on various aspects of ecosystem services. Box 1.2 provides an overview of the main recent and ongoing global assessment initiatives; further resources and background information on ecosystem services can be found in the “Additional Resources” section at the end of this chapter.

An assessment of ecosystem services needs to consider both the ecosystems from which the services are derived and also the people who depend on and are affected by changes in the supply of services, thereby connecting environmental and development sectors. Assessments play numerous roles in the decision-making process, including responding to decision makers’ needs for information, highlighting trade-offs between decision options, and analyzing ecosystems to avoid unforeseen long-term consequences. They inform decisions through providing critical judgment of options and uncertainty and through synthesizing and communicating complex information on relevant issues. They are also of value through the process they involve, which engages and informs decision makers long before final assessment products are available.

Box 1.1. The trade-off between food and fuel

Global food prices have been on the rise since 2000; they rose nearly 50 percent in 2007 alone. The price of basic staples, such as corn, oilseed, wheat, and cassava, is predicted to increase 26–135 percent by 2020. The recent increase in the cost of grain-based staples, such as tortillas in Mexico, beef noodles in western China, and bread in the United States, has several causes, including the emerging consequence of the increase in bioenergy production.

Promoted as a clean, sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, industrial countries have set increasingly higher mandates for the use of bioenergy to combat global climate change. Efforts to meet the rapid increase in demand for bioenergy have led to a global competition for limited natural resources such as land and water. Experts predicted that 30 million extra tons of corn—half of the global grain stock—would be dedicated to ethanol production in 2008 in the United States. On aver...