The Ecosystem Services Framework and Natural Capital Conservation

Work at the interface of ecology and economics has inspired a major transformation in the way people think about the environment. Increasingly, ecosystems are seen as capital assets, with the potential to generate a stream of vital life-support services meriting careful evaluation and investment. We first present the concepts underpinning the ecosystem services framework (ESF), laying out the scope and limitations of the approach. We then describe the major challenges in making the ESF operational: (i) detailed information at scales relevant to decision-making; (ii) practical know-how in the process of institutional design & implementation; and (iii) compelling models of success in which economic incentives are aligned with conservation. We close with a brief review of pioneering experiments now underway worldwide, which illustrate how these challenges can be overcome.     

An assessment of market-based approaches to providing ecosystem services on agricultural lands

Market-based approaches are increasingly being advocated as tools for achieving the conservation of ecosystem services. We examine the reasons why markets so far appear to have failed to provide an efficient allocation of many ecosystem services, and identify the conditions under which markets deliver efficient resource allocation. We discuss different forms of market-based approaches to ecosystem services and identify the characteristics of services that make them better suited to one or another of these approaches. We find that lack of low-cost measurability and valuation currently precludes efficient allocation of many ecosystem services through market-based approaches. Still, some forms of market-based approaches hold promise for cost-effectively managing some ecosystem services provided by and to agricultural lands. In many cases some form of well-designed government involvement will be required to seek outcomes that protect the public interest.     

Mapping community values for natural capital and ecosystem services

Whilst biophysical, and increasingly economic, values are often used to define high priority hotspots in planning for conservation and environmental management, community values are rarely considered. The community values mapping method presented in this paper builds on the concept of natural capital and ecosystem services and the landscape values methodology to link local perception of place to a broader measure of environmental values at the landscape level. Based on in-depth interviews and a mapping task conducted with 56 natural resource management decision-makers and community representatives, we quantified and mapped values and threats to natural capital assets and ecosystem services in the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin region. GIS-based techniques were used to map the spatial distribution of natural capital and ecosystem service values and threats over the region and analyse the proportional differences at the sub-regional scale. Participants assigned the highest natural capital asset value to water and biota assets primarily for the production of cultural, regulating and provisioning services. The most highly valued ecosystem services were recreation and tourism, bequest, intrinsic and existence, fresh water provision, water regulation and food provision. Participants assigned the highest threat to regulating services associated with water and land assets. Natural capital asset and ecosystem service values varied at both sub-regional and place-specific scales. Respondents believed people were integral to the environment but also posed a high threat to natural capital and ecosystem services. The results have implications for the way values toward natural capital and ecosystem services may be integrated into planning for environmental management.     

Valuing ecosystem services: A shadow price for net primary production

We analyze the contribution of ecosystem services to GDP and use this contribution to calculate an empirical price for ecosystem services. Net primary production is used as a proxy for ecosystem services and, along with capital and labor, is used to estimate a Cobb Douglas production function from an international panel. A positive output elasticity for net primary production probably measures both marketed and nonmarketed contributions of ecosystems services. The production function is used to calculate the marginal product of net primary production, which is the shadow price for ecosystem services. The shadow price generally is greatest for developed nations, which have larger technical scalars and use less net primary production per unit output. The rate of technical substitution indicates that the quantity of capital needed to replace a unit of net primary production tends to increase with economic development, and this rate of replacement may ultimately constrain economic growth.     

Measures of the effects of agricultural practices on ecosystem services

Agriculture produces more than just crops. Agricultural practices have environmental impacts that affect a wide range of ecosystem services, including water quality, pollination, nutrient cycling, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In turn, ecosystem services affect agricultural productivity. Understanding the contribution of various agricultural practices to the range of ecosystem services would help inform choices about the most beneficial agricultural practices. To accomplish this, however, we must overcome a big challenge in measuring the impact of alternative agricultural practices on ecosystem services and of ecosystem services on agricultural production. A framework is presented in which such indicators can be interpreted as well as the criteria for selection of indicators. The relationship between agricultural practices and land-use change and erosion impact on chemical use is also discussed. Together these ideas form the basis for identifying useful indicators for quantifying the costs and benefits of agricultural systems for the range of ecosystem services interrelated to agriculture.     

Demand-side factors in optimal land conservation choice

The dominant paradigm of conservation-reserve planning in economics is to optimize the provision of physical conservation benefits given a budget constraint, implicitly assuming the value of biodiversity and ecosystem function is not affected by human proximity to that natural capital. There is evidence, however, that human willingness to pay (WTP) for conservation declines with distance—a phenomenon we call “spatial value decay”. This paper begins a new strand of the conservation planning literature that takes demand-side factors – location of people in the landscape, the degree to which WTP for conservation depends on proximity – into account. We use theoretical models of linear abstract landscapes to explore the impact of demand-side factors on two facets of conservation choices: siting of a single reserve when conservation potential is greatest near a critical site, and siting of multiple reserves when fragmentation reduces physical conservation services produced. Our results show how planners should sometimes employ increased fragmentation to capture value when people's preferences are not very highly localized, and how optimal policy balances proximity to the ecologically critical site with proximity to people. In some scenarios, the payoff to using a reserve design approach that considers demand-side factors is large, but we find that spatial value decay reduces the benefits that can be gained from any conservation-planning approach.     

Defining and classifying ecosystem services for decision making

The concept of ecosystems services has become an important model for linking the functioning of ecosystems to human welfare. Understanding this link is critical for a wide-range of decision-making contexts. While there have been several attempts to come up with a classification scheme for ecosystem services, there has not been an agreed upon, meaningful and consistent definition for ecosystem services. In this paper we offer a definition of ecosystem services that is likely to be operational for ecosystem service research and several classification schemes. We argue that any attempt at classifying ecosystem services should be based on both the characteristics of the ecosystems of interest and a decision context for which the concept of ecosystem services is being mobilized. Because of this there is not one classification scheme that will be adequate for the many contexts in which ecosystem service research may be utilized. We discuss several examples of how classification schemes will be a function of both ecosystem and ecosystem service characteristics and the decision-making context.     

成长型资源城市绿色转型研究

资源型城市必须走绿色转型之路。绿色转型是以生态优先、绿色发展为导向的经济转型,其路径选择是一个摆脱传统发展模式向清洁、循环、低碳发展的递进过程,关键是选择在成长期主动转型,核心是优化资源型城市资源型产业发展路径。运用线性规划(linear programming)方法对成长型资源城市鄂尔多斯市的资源型产业发展路径优化分析得出,煤炭产业绿色转型不能只追求项目规模和经济增速,发展煤电及现代煤化工是煤炭产业绿色转型的最优路径,煤制气和煤制油是现代煤化工行业的最优路径。     

Adapting auctions for the provision of ecosystem services at the landscape scale

Auctions, or competitive tenders, can overcome information asymmetries to efficiently allocate limited funding for ecosystem services. Most auctions focus on ecosystem services on individual properties to maximise the total amount provided. However, for many services it is not just the total quantity but their location in the landscape relative to other sites that matters. For example, biodiversity conservation may be much more effective if conserved sites are connected. Adapting auctions to address ecosystem services at the landscape scale requires an auction mechanism which can promote coordination while maintaining competition. Multi-round auctions, in which bidding is spread over a number of rounds with information provided between rounds on the location of other bids in the landscape, offer an approach to cost effectively deliver landscape-scale ecosystem services. Experimental economic testing shows these auctions deliver the most cost effective environmental outcomes when the number of rounds is unknown in advance, which minimises rent-seeking behaviour. It also shows that a form of bid-improvement rule facilitates coordination and reduces rent seeking. Where the biophysical science is well developed, such auctions should be relatively straightforward to implement and participate in, and have the potential to provide significantly better outcomes than standard ‘one-shot’ tenders.     

The conservation against development paradigm in protected areas: Valuation of ecosystem services in the Doñana social-ecological system (southwestern Spain)

The ecosystems of the Doñana social-ecological system (southwestern Spain) provide numerous ecosystem services to society. We valued the most important ecosystem services through a market-based approach, revealed-preference and stated-preference methods to assess the conservation effectiveness of the Doñana Protected Area, with consideration of existing human activities in surrounding lands. We also analysed the spatial distribution of the ecosystem services beneficiaries and the scale of their related markets. We found a clear trade-off between the local and global market values of ecosystem services because landscape management outside of the Doñana Protected Area promotes the provision of ecosystem services associated with international markets. Our results suggest that a conservation against development model occurs in the Doñana social-ecological system, in which land use intensification takes place outside of the Protected Area borders as a result of promoting marketed ecosystem services, while biodiversity conservation is the main activity inside the Protected Area. We conclude that protected areas should be part of a larger-scale, adaptive landscape management strategy in which conservation planning should be the focal element in coordinating sectoral policies in the context of social-ecological systems.     

Appraisal of the vegetation-based services for cropland ecosystems： a case study of a high-yielding county in North China

1. Introduction Ecosystem services are explicitly defined as “the natural environmental conditions and effects upon which people rely for existence that are formed and maintained by ecosystems and ecological processes” [1] . The valuation of ecosystem goods and services has become an important issue in the field of envi- ronmental protection and sustainable development, which also represents one aspect of the United Na- tions Millennium Assessment. At present, the re- search associated wit…     

Soil biota, ecosystem services and land productivity

The soil environment is likely the most complex biological community. Soil organisms are extremely diverse and contribute to a wide range of ecosystem services that are essential to the sustainable function of natural and managed ecosystems. The soil organism community can have direct and indirect impacts on land productivity. Direct impacts are those where specific organisms affect crop yield immediately. Indirect effects include those provided by soil organisms participating in carbon and nutrient cycles, soil structure modification and food web interactions that generate ecosystem services that ultimately affect productivity. Recognizing the great biological and functional diversity in the soil and the complexity of ecological interactions it becomes necessary to focus in this paper on soil biota that have a strong linkage to functions which underpin ‘soil based’ ecosystem services. Selected organisms from different functional groups (i.e. microsymbionts, decomposers, elemental transformers, soil ecosystem engineers, soil-borne pest and diseases, and microregulators) are used to illustrate the linkages of soil biota and ecosystem services essential to life on earth as well as with those associated with the provision of goods and the regulation of ecosystem processes. These services are not only essential to ecosystem function but also a critical resource for the sustainable management of agricultural ecosystems. Research opportunities and gaps related to methodological, experimental and conceptual approaches that may be helpful to address the challenge of linking soil biodiversity and function to the provision of ecosystem services and land productivity are discussed. These include: 1) integration of spatial variability research in soil ecology and a focus on ‘hot spots’ of biological activity, 2) using a selective functional group approach to study soil biota and function, 3) combining new and existing methodological approaches that link selected soil organisms, the temporal and spatial dynamics of their function, and their contribution to the provision of selected ‘soil based' ecosystem services, 4) using understanding about hierarchical relationships to manage soil biota and function in cropping systems, 5) using local knowledge about plants as indicators of soil quality, remote sensing and GIS technologies, and plant-soil biota interactions to help understand the impacts of soil biota at landscape scale, and 6) developing land quality monitoring systems that inform land users about their land's ecosystem service performance, improve capacities to predict and adapt to environmental changes, and support policy and decision-making.     

A GIS-based approach for mapping direct use value of ecosystem services at a county scale: Management implications

A GIS-based approach was designed to spatially estimate direct use value of ecosystem services and to map results for a case study at county scale. The approach highlights the use of GIS to collect data, perform spatial analysis, and map economic values of ecosystem services. Three key steps of spatial valuation for agricultural products, forest products, and tourism services were illustrated in the GIS-based technical framework. We applied this approach to the Tiantai County (1423.8 km²) in Zhejiang province of southeast China. Selected components of natural products and tourism services in the case area were mapped as data layers in GIS, with each layer containing monetary values for every 25 m cell. The total direct use value of ecosystem services was estimated in RMB to be approximately 538 million Yuan in 2005 (Chinese currency, 8.2 Yuan = US$1), of which agricultural products, forest products and tourism services accounted for 65%, 30% and 5%, respectively. The critical areas for management purpose were identified depending on the heterogeneity of direct use services learned from the case study. The spatially explicit measures provide a mechanism for incorporating spatial context into ecosystem services evaluation. Based on the present GIS-based approach and case study, the suggestions and implications for local resources protection and eco-environmental management were extensively discussed. The work was expected to highlight research avenues to advance the ecosystem services framework as an operational basis for regional ecosystem-based management.     

Identifying cost-effective hotspots for restoring natural capital and enhancing landscape multifunctionality

Much effort is expended toward planning for conservation, natural resource management and sustainable land use in agricultural landscapes. Although often not explicitly stated, the aims of these efforts are often to restore natural capital for the provision of ecosystem services and stimulate multifunctionality in landscapes. However, the scarcity of resources for, and the potential economic impact of, ameliorative actions that restore natural capital necessitates the identification of cost-effective geographic priorities, or hotspots, which provide multiple ecosystem goods and services. This requires the integrated spatial modelling of multiple environmental and economic processes accompanied by clear goals and performance indicators. Identification of hotspots provides guidance for highly targeted land use change that cost-effectively adds to the stocks of natural capital in a landscape. Additionally, the multifunctionality of the landscape can be increased through the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services. This paper begins by examining data requirements for identifying geographic hotspots for land use change. This study integrates traditionally disparate landscape-scale biophysical and economic data and models. The elements of natural capital considered here are species and ecosystems, soil and water resources, and the atmosphere. It is demonstrated that locating ameliorative actions towards hotspots will be more cost-effective at restoring natural capital and stimulating landscape multifunctionality than a random targeting approach. We calculate these efficiencies using a small set of indicators for assessing aspects of multifunctionality. The focus of this study is the agricultural landscapes of the Lower Murray region of south-eastern Australia.     

Institutional incentives for managing the landscape: Inducing cooperation for the production of ecosystem services

Agricultural landscapes hold tremendous potential for producing a diverse stream of ecosystem services. Yet, because the spatial configuration of particular ecosystems is critical to the supply of many services, realizing this potential requires that farms be managed in a coordinated way across landscapes rather than as independent units. Under existing incentive programs, this level of coordination is typically neither required nor encouraged.Here we explore how to achieve such coordination from an institutional perspective using voluntary incentives rather than regulation. We focus on three services operating at contrasting scales, from local to global: pollination, hydrologic services, and carbon sequestration. First, we briefly illustrate how agricultural practices can diminish or enhance their provision. Next, we show how all three services require coordinated, landscape-scale management because provision depends upon particular spatial configurations, of which we provide several stylized examples. Finally, based on these stylized configurations, we evaluate the relative merits of three incentive designs-the “cooperation bonus,” the “entrepreneur,” and the “ecosystem service district”-to promote cross-farm cooperation to enhance service provision.All three incentive systems rely on rational self-interest, have cooperative configurations to promote ecosystem services across different scales, use tiered reward systems, and have a major voluntary element. They are distinct in certain key features. The cooperation bonus system rewards conservation even without cooperation but adds a bonus for cooperation. In the entrepreneur incentive, all tiers of reward are contingent upon cooperation. The ecosystem service district scheme is only partially voluntary and forces cooperation of all landowners once the district is formed. Our analysis of these heuristic alternatives integrates biophysical, economic, and institutional factors with the aim of addressing the suite of institutional barriers for landscape-scale management.     

Integrating the valuation of ecosystem services into the Input-Output economics of an Alpine region

Traditional economic accounting mostly ignores the benefits provided by nature, and thus falls short in giving incentives for improving the way the economy uses natural resources. In this study, we develop a general framework for integrating the value of ecosystem services into an Input-Output Table. In particular, we integrate regionally valued ecosystem services on the supply side of an Input-Output Table to quantify what natural resources offer to economic development. Using several different indicators, we show the benefits of the ecosystem services under the status quo and a scenario for regional development. Our results suggest that economic activities should be encouraged to use the ecosystem services more intensively, while landscape development should aim at providing the required services. We conclude that such an approach can provide a platform for decision-makers to learn quantitatively about the dependency of the regional economy on natural services.     

Ecosystem services and agriculture: Cultivating agricultural ecosystems for diverse benefits

Crop and rangelands are over 25% of the Earth's land area, and they are expanding. Agricultural ecosystems rely on a suite of supporting ecosystem services to provide food, fiber and fuel as well as a range of accompanying but non-marketed ecosystem services (ES). Ecosystem services from agriculture include regulation of water and climate systems, aesthetic and cultural services, as well as enhanced supporting services (such as soil fertility). Many of these ES are appreciated by people, but they lack markets, so they lack the incentives for provision that come with prices. For public policy decisions to take them into account, non-market valuation techniques are needed, such as travel cost, contingent valuation, hedonic valuation, and cost-based or factor-income approaches. This article offers an overview of ES from agriculture and non-market valuation methods as it introduces the articles in this special section on “Ecosystem Services and Agriculture.” Understanding how ecological functions generate ES is fundamental to management, but so too is understanding how humans perceive and value those services. Research is required both to design cost-effective incentives to provide ES and to measure which kinds of ES could provide the greatest overall welfare benefits to society. Agricultural ecosystems offer newly recognized potential to deliver more diverse ecosystem services and mitigate the level of past ecosystem disservices. This special section of Ecological Economics conveys both how these are becoming possible and the challenges to science and public policy design of turning that potential into reality.     

The value of ecosystem services provided by the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System in the contiguous U.S.

Studies that demonstrate the economic value of the ecosystem services provided by public conservation lands can contribute to a more accurate appraisal of the benefit of these lands. The objective of this study was to estimate the economic value, in real (2004) dollars, of the ecosystem services provided by the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System (Refuge System) in the contiguous U.S. In order to estimate this value, we determined the ecosystems present on the Refuge System in the contiguous 48 states, the proportion in which they are represented, and the dollar value of services provided by each. We used land cover classes as an approximation of ecosystems present in the Refuge System. In a geographic information system (GIS), we combined land cover geospatial data with a map of the Refuge System boundaries to calculate the number of acres for each refuge and land cover class within the Refuge System. We transferred values for the following ecosystem services: climate and atmospheric gas regulation; disturbance prevention; freshwater regulation and supply; waste assimilation and nutrient regulation; and habitat provision. We conducted a central tendency value transfer by transferring averaged values taken from primarily original site studies to the Refuge System based on the ecoregion in which each study site and refuge was located and the ecoregion's relative net primary productivity (NPP). NPP is a parameter used to quantify the net carbon absorption rate by living plants, and has been shown to be correlated with spatially fungible ecosystem services. The methodologies used in the site studies included direct market valuation, indirect market valuation and contingent valuation. We estimated the total value of ecosystem services provided by the Refuge System in the contiguous U.S. to be approximately $26.9 billion/year. This estimate is a first cut attempt to demonstrate that the value of the Refuge System likely exceeds the value derived purely from recreational activities. Due to limitations of current understanding, methods and data, there is a potentially large margin of error associated with the estimate.     

Valuing deer hunting ecosystem services from farm landscapes

Agricultural land provides a wide variety ecosystem services to individuals. These agroecosystem services include wildlife and biodiversity, which in turn support recreational opportunities such as hunting and wildlife viewing. Using the random utility travel cost model, we provide an estimate to illustrate the potential value of the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) provisioning and recreational services provided by these ecosystems to deer hunters, as well as the value of providing deer hunters public access to a percentage of agricultural land.