Hello all,
In my previous posts, I have elaborated largely on the identification and measurement of ecosystem services, and an example of trade-offs that could occur using an ecosystem approach. In this post, I will subsequently speak more about the application of the ecosystem services approach to biodiversity conservation.
1. Informs Decisions on Biodiversity Conservation
The ecosystem services approach informs decision-making for biodiversity conservation, especially for uninterested communities. In the South African Municipality of uMhlathuze, there was enormous pressures to expand development projects into sub-catchment areas in response to population growth (Ingram et al. 2012). Tensions between biodiversity conservation and development arose. To the underprivileged communities, the biodiversity conservationists were indirectly expressing that protecting species diversity was more important than the developmental needs of the community.
In response, the municipality carried out the Strategic Catchment Assessment to value ecosystem services in the catchment area. The study highlighted the free ecosystem services that have always been provided to the neighbouring population: nutrient cycling, waste management, water supply, water regulation, flood regulation and drought management, all of which valued to about US$200 million a year. Subsequently, the community was more encouraging in the protection of the natural environment as they realised that the sub-catchment area and its water resources provided large economic benefit; biodiversity was not the sole reason.
The ecosystem services approach informs decision-making for biodiversity conservation, especially for uninterested communities. In the South African Municipality of uMhlathuze, there was enormous pressures to expand development projects into sub-catchment areas in response to population growth (Ingram et al. 2012). Tensions between biodiversity conservation and development arose. To the underprivileged communities, the biodiversity conservationists were indirectly expressing that protecting species diversity was more important than the developmental needs of the community.
In response, the municipality carried out the Strategic Catchment Assessment to value ecosystem services in the catchment area. The study highlighted the free ecosystem services that have always been provided to the neighbouring population: nutrient cycling, waste management, water supply, water regulation, flood regulation and drought management, all of which valued to about US$200 million a year. Subsequently, the community was more encouraging in the protection of the natural environment as they realised that the sub-catchment area and its water resources provided large economic benefit; biodiversity was not the sole reason.
2. Increases Value of Larger Protected Areas
Large protected areas currently hold many of the world's endemic and rare species, and these areas have often been earmarked for conservation for the purposes of maintaining biodiversity. In situations of land pressure and limited biodiversity funding for protected areas however, it is increasingly difficult to maintain these huge areas of land for the sake of biodiversity alone. Biodiversity conservation may therefore be in greater support if there is recognition of the ecosystem services provided, which are especially beneficial in large protected areas.
For example, these protected areas are important to provide for direct (eg. food and timber) and indirect (eg. clean water from regulation) provisioning ecosystem services, benefits that the underprivileged may not be able to replace immediately (Turner et al. 2012). In particular, regulatory services are especially pronounced in these large protected areas - the "invisible services" that are difficult to measure and are not directly consumed by humans, such as nutrient cycling and pollution control (Ingram et al. 2012: 5). For example, large conservation areas like wetlands increase the transport distance of polluted water flowing through them, increasing their potential for landscape-scale pollutant retention (Quin et al. 2015). The increased perceived value of the protected areas may therefore ensure for the continued persistence of these huge areas of protected land, which may initially be economically unjustifiable.
Limitations (Ingram et al. 2012)
1. The approach cannot capture all critical species, especially the species that are not "useful" or "valuable" to people. For example, rare and endemic species often do not have an important functional role, and it may therefore be difficult to justify their ecological importance to the community.
2. The approach may not prioritise important ecological processes to species, unless they deliver benefits to humans. Fire regimes are often designed to reduce chances of negative impacts of humans, but they are not beneficial to the native community and can lead to major changes in community structure within the landscape.
*3. PES approaches that aim to restore completely degraded ecosystems may lead to trade-offs (recall: Carbon and Water trade-off), as PES approaches often aim to optimise a single service which may undermine other critical ecological functions. In general, it may be most ideal for PES programmes to preserve and enhance existing ecosystems instead, to have the best combined impact on biodiversity and ecological processes (eg. paying native communities to preserve grasslands and wildlife for safari tourism).
The ecosystem services approach is especially important to communities that may place their own needs over biodiversity conservation, as it explicitly highlights the benefits that may otherwise have been neglected. Linking to the water and development goals within Africa, the ecosystem services approach has illustrated how the optimal decision can be made when considering the trade-off between development and biodiversity in the above-mentioned examples. These two management approaches were only possible to carry out as the revenue stream from water-related ecosystem services far exceeded the benefits from destroying these critical conservation areas for development purposes.
These have all encouraged the local communities to engage in sustainable resource practices and decision-making in support of biodiversity conservation, and is therefore also applicable for future biodiversity conservation intentions. However, to improve further, it is important to evolve in our understanding of an ecosystem service approach to include more forms of improved well-being (eg. in consideration of endemic species) to protect the range of ecosystems and species diversity on Earth.
In my next post, I will use another case study on how an ecosystem services approach may assist in resource management and decision-making through their application to land use change.
See you next week!
Hey Hui!
ReplyDeleteThis is a fantastic, comprehensive overview on the way in which the benefits of ecosystems services can sway policy towards conservation.
Perhaps this is a bit of a pessimistic concept, but do you think that the good of the local community is always enough to convince policy makers not to develop on landscapes with key ecosystems services. The buildings of large dams, such as Kariba, for instance, went ahead despite the clear ecosystems services which flooding brought to local Zimbabweans by way of flood recession agriculture, water security during the dry season,, etc.?
On a more positive aspect, I'm sure you will agree with me that just because a species doesn't have an obvious use to humans, it will usually play a key role in an overall ecosystem which does offer services to humanity. How can policymakers be shown or be convinced that every species is, ultimately, important?
Dear Mari,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, thank you very much for your comment!
In response to your first question, I would say that the good of the local community is probably what policy makers seek for in the first place in the execution of their efforts. I believe that they would not put in so much effort to build a perceived large useless dam; they had probably seen the value of these large dams in improving the lives of the community before carrying out their efforts. Such decisions however, may be uninformed. Following your comment, I read briefly about the Kariba Dam to find that the dam also supplies electricity through hydropower, and in the initial stages of the decision-making it may have been the case that the politicians saw this as more economically viable. Of course, dams have also been popularly used to control floods to provide year-round agricultural production in areas of alternating climatic conditions, especially in a region like Zimbabwe with dry and rainy seasons. However, in recent years more academic studies have gone on to show that large water resource schemes often bring more harm than good, through hydrological modelling studies which may not have been easily available or charted in the past especially in the more data-scarce regions of Africa. Therefore, I do not doubt the intentions of the policy makers to bring a better livelihood to the local community, except that their understanding of hydrological structures may have been insufficient compared to the present information today.
This is where I would shamelessly promote the use of an ecosystem services approach again - by specifically outlining the benefits obtained from ecosystem services prior to and after the construction of the water resource scheme, it may be clearer for decision-making purposes (you can read more in this post: http://water-and-ecosystems.blogspot.sg/2017/11/valuation-of-water-floodplain.html).
In response to your second question - of course! I happen to be working on a dissertation using dragonflies as an indicator of freshwater habitat integrity in Singapore, and hence I agree with you that every species has a purpose within an ecosystem although it may not benefit humans directly. For example, dragonflies may not necessarily be directly beneficial to humans as most people do not consume insects, but they are a strong indicator of whether an ecosystem is disturbed or undisturbed.
Unfortunately, I feel that we have reached a point whereby it is not about saving all species, but choosing the best species to save, and this decision is often done in the benefit of humans. While all are important and we may try our best to conserve protected areas, it is a known fact that some species bring more benefits than others. For example, saving the pandas has always seen some divided views as they are really expensive to continue conservation, and they are likely to face extinction in the wild (i.e. will not survive in natural habitat). Some have also cited that saving the rainforests and paying attention to biodiversity hotspots are ultimately more viable... but all these depend on the value of the services that the species provide.
If pandas bring in more money (from cultural services) than a rare insect within the rainforest which may contribute to perhaps education, the rational economic choice unfortunately seems clear. Therefore, while I do not dispute that every species serves a role in an ecosystem, it may be difficult to convince policymakers that all are important - because we can only save a portion of the endemic endangered species with the finite resources we have.
I hope this was not too long...
Hui Ping