Ecological restoration, ecosystem services, and land use: a European perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This special feature provides an overview on how the ecosystem service concept has been and can be incorporated into the science, practice, and policies of ecological restoration (ER) and evidence-based land-use. It includes an edited selection of eleven invited and peer-reviewed papers based on presentations given during the 9th European Conference on Ecological Restoration in 2014. The focus is on Europe, but many contributors also make appraisals and recommendations at the global scale. Based on the contributors' papers, and our own overview of the promise of ecological restoration in the existing international treaties, coalitions, and conventions, we propose that the following actions could contribute to the positive impacts of ER on biodiversity maintenance, ecosystem functioning, progressive mainstreaming the concepts of both ER and ecosystem services, significant mitigation and offsetting of anthropogenic climate change, and lasting enhancement of both ecosystem and human health: ! ER should be incorporated into land use planning, wherever needed, and the synergies and trade-offs of different land use scenarios should be assessed in terms of their impacts on ecosystem services. ! The discourse of ER should be enlarged, wherever it is needed, to include multifunctional land use that simultaneously supports sustainable production systems, built environments, and the quality and quantity of diverse ecosystem services. This approach will generate ecological, social, and economic benefits in the long run. ! Monitoring and evaluation of ER projects should be a continuous process involving careful selection of indicators chosen with the full range of stakeholders in mind, and a sufficiently long-term perspective to catch the progress of long-term or highly dynamic ecosystem processes. ! Scientists should actively participate in policy and land management discussions in order to give their views on the potential outcomes of decisions. ! Greater cooperation and exchanges are needed within the EU and globally in order to accelerate the upscaling, improvement, and mainstreaming of both large-scale ER and the science and application of the ecosystem services concept.

Applying a Multi-Criteria Project Portfolio Tool in Selecting Energy Peat Production Areas

“…The need to address multiple values in the use of natural resources and land use planning related decision making is evident, along with the growing knowledge about the impacts of economic activities on biodiversity and ecosystem services [34]. However, there is a gap between research and practical decision making: Different tools and scientifically sound results are available to support the multi-objective participatory decision processes, but they are rarely utilized extensively in real-life processes [18,35,36].…”

Meeting Aichi Target 15: Efforts and further needs of ecological restoration in Hungary

“…The mid-term review of the EU Biodiversity Strategy (European Commission 2015) states that no significant overall progress was made, the same is true for the Aichi targets (RSPB 2016). There is a general opinion of the failure of reaching Aichi targets in the required time frame (Leadley et al 2014;Tittensor et al 2014;Cortina-Segarra et al 2016;Tolvanen and Aronson 2016;Teh et al 2017). Despite of probable non-compliance, the targets should not be given up (Simberloff and Vitule 2014;Tolvanen and Aronson 2016;Ruete et al 2018).…”

“…The Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2010) and the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020 (European Commission 2011) both define 15% of degraded land to be restored by 2020. The implementation of this goal seems to be behind progress in many European countries (Cortina-Segarra et al 2016;Tolvanen and Aronson 2016), and only few member states or regions have carried out restoration prioritization to guide the process (Aradóttir et al 2013;Hagen et al 2013;Kotiaho et al 2016). However, many authors agree that the process should be accelerated to reverse biodiversity loss (Aronson and Alexander 2013;Tittensor et al 2014;Tolvanen and Aronson 2016).…”

Ecological Restoration and Ecosystem Services

“…Most importantly the processes responsible of the ecological functioning of the whole system will be improved, so keeping its capacity to provide multiple ES and the sustainability of the whole territory. This approach has been proposed to be applied at watershed (Comin et al 2018) and continental (Tolvanen and Aronson 2016) scales. It could be used to plan ER at global scale, as it is well-known which ES are more or less provided by different Earth zones (Costanza et al 2014).…”