Ecosystem services are a way of thinking about – and evaluating – the goods and services provided by nature that contribute to the well-being of humans. This MOOC will cover scientific (technical), economic, and socio-political dimensions of the concept through a mix of theory, case-studies, interviews with specialists and a serious-game. By the end of this course, our aim is to enable you to: • define the concept of ecosystem services, its principles and limitations • understand the key services associated with any ressource (e.g., fresh water) through readings and case-studies • appreciate the advantages and potential risks of monetising ecosystem services • appreciate the social dimensions (power issues, cultural biases) embedded within any method • integrate tactical advice on mainstreaming this approach into policy and standard government practices • Optional: learn how to map ecosystem services with GIS tools The session that runs May 29th- July 10th will be actively monitored by the instructors, and learners will have the opportunity to ask questions. This course was developed by instructors from the University of Geneva with the help of numerous researchers and input from the Geneva Water Hub and the Natural Capital Project. The course was financed by the University of Geneva, the Global Programme Water Initiatives of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the Luc Hoffmann Institute. This MOOC is supported by the Geneva Water Hub and the University of Geneva along with the MOOC in « Water Resources Management and Policy » (www.coursera.org/learn/water-management) and the one in « International Water Law » (www.coursera.org/learn/droit-eau). We look forward to you joining us!
1.5 In what context can the ecosystem services method be used?
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Ecosystem Services: a Method for Sustainable Development
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Module 1: Frontiers in Ecosystem Services
Play the TRADE-OFF game (online), meet the primary instructors of this course, and discover the key questions that we will be revisiting throughout this course in this introductory module.
与讲师见面
Martin SchlaepferSenior Lecturer
Institute of Environmental Sciences
Anthony LehmannAssociate Professor
Section of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Institute for Environmental Sciences and
Juliet Jane FallProfessor
Department of Geography and Environment, Geneva School of Social Sciences
[MUSIC]
You've been convinced that the ecosystem service method is useful for putting to
light the contribution of natural capital towards our human well-being.
But conducting an assessment takes time.
It can be as little as a few hours or it can be several months.
You're obviously going to ask yourself at some point, when are the best cases for
using this type of approach?
So in this sequence,
we're going to ask, when is is the ecosystem approach most useful?
And secondly, when is it most likely to succeed?
Those are two slightly different questions, and
it's important to take each of them in turn.
So in my view, this approach works best when we're dealing with an important,
strategic decision that deals with natural resources.
I have seen the best examples when we're applying either a governmental decision,
or even a private sector decision, about a specific project and
we have to weigh the pros and the cons of that project.
Indeed, the ecosystem service method allows one to be fairly transparent and
objective about what the gains and the losses under each scenario might be.
So typically, if you're going to build a dam, it's going to bring some benefits,
electricity, to a certain amount of population.
But another segment in the population is going to suffer some of the consequences.
And this type of framework allows different actors to come together and
weigh the pros and the cons in a common framework.
It's interesting, because this approach can also be used by the private sector,
even more of a risk analysis type approach, where they have to identify
their potential dependency on the flow of certain ecosystem services.
Or they have to realize how quickly they may be able to rebound after some
catastrophic event.
So the approach is most likely to actually be implemented, in theory at least,
when it's conducted in a certain way.
And we're going to get a little bit more into this in the next sequence.
But it's when we have situations where our natural resource is clearly identified,
a problem is clearly identified, all the people who are potentially affected by
the decision are clearly identified.
And the process is led in a iterative, collaborative way.
That's the theory, at least.
We'll see that in practice it can get a little bit more complicated than that.
Let's take a very concrete and common example.
Here we have a farmer who's using what's called conventional farming techniques.
Namely, he is choosing to use herbicides, pesticides, and
fertilizers to boost the production of any given crop, any part of the world.
This is a decision that is made based on an economic rationale that
you get the most food for the least amount of investment, both in terms of time and
money to produce that food.
What's interesting in this common scenario is that there's a lot of externalities
that are not incorporated into the equation.
So what's an externality?
An externality is any effect, positive or negative,
that a third party suffers without having a say of either the price or
the decision to implement a certain policy.
So in this case, think of the farmer who's applying these herbicides and pesticides.
One of the externalities in this equation is the production of greenhouse gas
emissions, which currently can be released into the environment for free.
Greenhouse gas emissions and
fossil fuels are used in high levels to produce a lot of the synthetic chemicals.
Another externality is the human cost, especially in terms of human health.
The workers that have to apply these chemicals may suffer increases of
certain rates of illness and disease.
Finally, you may have the nitrogen that's released into the environment and
that flows downstream.
There have been several examples throughout the world where downstream
bays, due to nitrification,
which comes from excess nitrogen released into the environment, has entire
fisheries collapse of the regions that are exposed to the excess nitrogen.
So, here's a group, for example, of stakeholders, where you have
the downstream fishermen who are affected by upstream logical and legal decisions.
So, how could the ecosystem service method be applied in this scenario and by whom?
I would argue it could be used by a number of different players.
First of all, the farmer himself or herself may ask, okay,
I can either continue doing things the way I've always done them, or
I can go along an organic certification route.
What are the pros and the cons of each of those methods?
Perhaps you have a local government who's in charge of the watershed.
And who's getting complaints from the downstream residents
about some of the negative consequences of nitrification.
They may get the different parties together around a table and
say, okay, we need jobs.
We need income, we need to produce food.
But is there perhaps a different compromise that we can strike, where
you can still produce the food, but by diminishing some of the downstream costs?
You might also take the perspective from a local NGO,
that's a concern about the environmental issues.
They may be concern about the effects on wildlife on in particular.
And they may use the ecosystem service approach to highlight how we are eroding,
basically the base, the natural resource that feeds all of our
well-being over the long run, and seek ways to better protect it.
Finally, the private sector might be interested in analyzing
the situation through the ecosystem service method.
So for example, imagine a large corporation or a multinational
that's considering buying a stake in a downstream factory that produces or
that processes fish.
They may wish to understand how upstream activities could potentially
threaten their revenue stream.
So, what's interesting about this case is that the people who are negatively
affected by the upstream decisions aren't necessarily around the table
when decisions are made about how much herbicide, pesticides,
fertilizers can be used.
These types of decisions are usually taken on a fairly siloed way.
And the immediate concerns are, is it safe in the immediate environment,
are the workers going to be safe when they apply it?
And yet, we see that, in reality, over a larger temporal and spacial scales, a lot
of other factors and actors are ultimately going to be affected by these decisions.
So we're starting to see how these are also complicated to implement,
in terms of getting people around a table.
Because the stakeholders, whether it's the future generations, the downstream farmers
or other players, often aren't involved in the initial decision.
So how does one conduct one of these ecosystem service assessments in practice?
Well, it turns out that a bunch of different organizations have put together
manuals, and we've put links to these for you in below the video.
Most of them are freely available.
All of them, however, follow a very similar sequence of events.
All of them begin with the idea of scoping, namely, what is the problem?
What are the current trends which, if they continue as-is,
in a business-as-usual sequence, what will happen?
The second important step is scenario building.
Basically, and this probably isn't done enough in practice, where people stop and
say, okay, what are the different decisions that we have in front of us?
We can go down pathway A, or pathway B, or pathway C.
And these are basically going to set the parameters to allow us to
estimate the consequences of each of these different pathways.
The third step is precisely that.
It's modelling the consequences of each of these political decisions.
For example, when the UK did their national ecosystem assessment,
they contrasted different types of economies, from a very
neoliberal, open market view to a more protectionist and isolationist view.
Each of those had very different consequences on different types of
ecosystem services, from provisioning, cultural, and regulatory services.
But at least they were able to model them out into the future.
The fourth decision is regarding which indicators to
use to see if one is making progress.
How will we know if we're moving in the right direction?
Fifthly, how does one conduct the valuing?
This is actually a very interesting and important step,
where we decide how are we going to conduct arbitration.
Inevitably, there's going to be trade-offs between these different scenarios.
How do we decide what is acceptable to our society and what isn't?
Are there, for example, some elements that are irreplaceable?
Can other elements, if once lost, can be compensated or mitigated elsewhere?
These are the types of decisions that will have to be taken ideally in
a collective setting.
Finally, there's the debate and decision-making phase.
It's also important to understand that the ecosystem service approach is not some
mathematical formula that spits out the perfect silver bullet answer.
All it does, it puts down on paper, white on black,
what the consequences of different types of political choices probably will be.
Ultimately, it still remains a political decision where people have to barter and
trade and find something that's acceptable to all parties.
Ideally, this type of process is also done iteratively,
which means that as new information is gained, or
new information comes in, we revisit some of our assumptions.
And it's also done in a participatory way, where ideas and
scenarios are co-generated, so that learning is also done collectively.
This all sounds, to me, extremely idealistic,
and I almost want to start chanting kumbaya sometimes.
But I think it's interesting to understand that the notions embedded within this
approach match those of the ideals we're trying to reach, if we are trying to move
society towards a more sustainable and ethical way of living.
These type of approaches could at least not only help change our minds, but
also make us make better decisions in practice.
One of the take-home messages of this sequence is that,
by using the ecosystem service approach,
one will end up taking different decisions from those that are made currently.
They'll be different, but they'll also be better in the sense that they'll probably
lead to a more sustainable society, a more ethical society,
where the differences between the haves and the have-nots are reduced.
[MUSIC]
