The RUBICODE project on “Rationalising biodiversity conservation in dynamic ecosystems” has published its latest and final newsletter.
Among other products, the project has prepared an interesting report on research priorities for ecosystem services (pdf here). The report lists 11 priorities, which are commented briefly below.
This is a major goal of ecosystem service science when it comes to informing decision-makers concerning the management of biodiversity. It is somewhat overarching.
Trait-based approaches, also labelled functional diversity approaches, are now well developped for linking biodiversity, ecosystem properties and ecosystem services, in particular for plant diversity. As well as being grounded in theory, they offer useful indicators that are often require less expertise than the identification of species and the estimation of their abundance. Expanding these approaches to address multi-trophic linkages, thresholds and multiple scale is the next step.
This point relates particularly well with policy and management issues. As the incorporation of ecosystem services into the decision-making process of land management marches forward such questions will most likely gain in practicality and lose their esoteric touch – which is probably a good thing.
As well as uncertainty in the future changes in direct and indirect drivers, ecosystem service science should also assist decision makers in incorporating uncertainty in the scientific knowledge itself. Given the limitations and contextuality of what we know of the dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems, dealing with uncertainty should be central to the design and evaluation of policy options as well as concrete – on the ground – actions.
As well as understanding who and what determines the choice of metrics and who is called upon to value ecosystem services, the conceptual bases for these choices should be made explicit (and possibly challenged).
Double accounting in the definition of ecosystem service is a recurrent problem, in particular among ecologists. The issue will be discussed in a later post. Meanwhile, you can read the excellent paper by Boyd & Banzhaf (2006).
These priorities are central to the incorporation of ecosystem services in mainstream decision making concerning land-use and natural resource management.
The goal of making land management more biodiversity- and ecosystem service-friendly is a very notable trend in public policies for agriculture and forestry (at least in the developed world). Providing quantitative data on ecosystem service provision by alternative policy options is necessary for designing precise incentives schemes that actually serve the goal of ecosystem service provision (rather than the goal of satisfying a particular political base…). Such incentive schemes are an essential component of the policy mix for biodiversity and ecosystem service enhancement.
The development of biodiversity and ecosystem service offsets in recent years is a step in this direction. Hopefully, ecosystem service scientists will embrace this trend and strengthen its scientific basis.
Did you notice how long the list is?