The social value of biodiversity and ecosystem services from the perspectives of different social actors

Abstract

ABSTRACT. A vast literature is now available on ecosystem services (ES), their potential as a tool for analyzing intertwined processes of ecological and social change, and their monetary valuation. Much less is known about the social value of different ES for different social actors (SA), and their links with specific components of biodiversity. We unpack the social aspects of an interdisciplinary and multi-SA methodology that allows us to assess how different SA perceive and value different ES, and how they associate them with different components of biodiversity, ecological attributes, and ecosystem types. We apply the methodology to a study area in the Gran Chaco region of South America, presenting original social-ecological information from the field. Being affected by the rapid and widespread expansion of agribusiness over the woody ecosystems of southern South America, this location provides a policy-relevant context in which to test our approach. We identified six major ecosystem types and five relevant SA. We carried out 163 individual indepth interviews and ran seven single-actor focus groups. We identified 116 ES, which were then aggregated into 22 more general categories. Although all SA perceived all ecosystem types as multifunctional, they showed markedly different perceptions of and interests in the ES provided by them. Subsistence farmers and extension officers valued a large number of ES primarily provided by the most pristine ecosystems. Members of conservation agencies and policymakers also identified a wide range of ES, spanning all ecosystem types. However, large farmers and cattle ranchers recognized a dependency on only a small number of ES. Therefore, the rapid expansion of agribusiness occurring in this region is a threat to a large number of ES considered valuable by a wide range of SA. Without necessarily having to resort to monetary valuation, our methodology provides a rigorous quantitative-qualitative way to compare the perspective of different SA, including scientists, and is thus useful for social-ecological assessment and action.

El dispositivo eco-tecnocrático: el caso del manejo del agua agroindustrial en Mendoza-Argentina

“…Precisamente a esto nos referíamos al retomar las apreciaciones de O'Connor (2001) acerca de "una naturaleza a imagen y semejanza del capital". En rigor, existe abundante bibliografía que fundamenta los efectos regresivos en el campo social agropecuario (concentración económica, exclusión social, descampesinización) que implica la aplicación de tecnologías intensivas (Cáceres, Soto, Ferrer, Silvetti & Bisio, 2010;Cáceres, Tapella, Quétier & Díaz, 2015;Tapellan, 2004;Teubal, 2002). En el sentido que aquí le otorgamos, la palabra tecnología no sólo implica el anclaje material (las cañerías, las bombas, los filtros, los genes), sino toda una ingeniería social y nuevas tecnologías de administración de lo social y lo natural.…”

Рослини роду Robinia як індикатор оптимізуючої дії зоогенного механізму екосистемних сервісів в умовах урбоекосистем

“…Отже, пошук нових механізмів зоогенних екосистемних сервісів (Vasilyuk, 2016a(Vasilyuk, , 2016b(Vasilyuk, , 2016c) за умов урбоекосистем, має прикладне значення. Визначення видового різноманіття, як основоположного чинника надійності та сталості екосистем (Bulakhov, Pakhomov, 2006;Caceres et al, 2015;Sanyal et al, 2015a;Ao et al, 2016;Vanguelova et al, 2017), що запобігає (регулюючі екосистемні сервіси) зміні клімату (Dee, Ahn, 2014), забезпечує (забезпечуючі екосистемні послуги) карбонатні цикли (Tavakkoli et al, 2015;Garland et al, 2016;Hardy et al, 2016), досить актуально. Визначається вплив і землекористування на рослинність, ґрунт та воду (Sanyal et al, 2015b;Njue et al, 2016) та розраховуються платежі за користування екосистемними послугами.…”

Priorities to Advance Monitoring of Ecosystem Services Using Earth Observation

“…To monitor ecosystem services, it is therefore critical to assess not only their supply (being more closely linked to ecosystem functions), but also their demand by different social actors [26] and their actual benefit experienced by people [21]. For example, old-growth forests 115 in a catchment help stabilize soils and prevent erosion.…”

“…We are at a critical juncture 26 in international decision-making about natural capital and about how to resolve conflicting objectives that arise from the SDGs [88] and that are perceived to lead to potential trade-offs between short-term economic and societal benefits (cf. SDGs 8 and 9) versus the long-term 315 insurance of functioning of aquatic, marine and terrestrial ecosystems (cf.…”