Ecosystem Services Global Issues, Local Practices

About this book

Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices covers scientific input, socio-economic considerations, and governance issues on ecosystem services. This book provides hands-on transdisciplinary reflections by administrators and sector representatives involved in the ecosystem service community. Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices develops shared approaches and scientific methods to achieve knowledge-based sustainable planning and management of ecosystem services. Professionals engaged in ecosystem service implementation have two options: de-emphasize the ecological and socioeconomic complexity and advance in the theoretical, abstract field, or try to develop research that is policy relevant and inclusive in an uncertain environment. Ecosystem Services: Global Issues, Local Practices provides a wide overview of issues at stake, of interest for any professional wishing to develop a broader view on ecosystem service science and practice. It examines a broad scope of relevant issues to create common understanding in the ecosystem services community. It includes contributions from several backgrounds, providing a broad, multidisciplinary view. It offers recommendations to develop a thorough understanding and management of ecosystem services based on tools and research in larger territories as well as on local scales.

Contents

A Preface
B Introduction
C Editorial: No Root, No Fruit

PART I ECOSYSTEM SERVICE BASICS
1. Inclusive Ecosystem Services Valuation
2. Ecosystem services and their monetary value
3. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
4. Ecosystem Service Indicators: Are we measuring what we want to manage
5. Enquiring the Governance of Ecosystem Services: an introduction

PART II ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: CONCEPTUAL REFLECTIONS
6. Monetary Valuation of Ecosystem Services: Unresolvable Problems with the Standard Economic Model
7. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: opposed visions, opposed paradigms
8. Earth system services - a global science perspective on ecosystem services
9. Ecosystem Services in a Societal Context
10. The value of the Ecosystem Services concept in economic and biodiversity policy

PART III ECOSYSTEM SERVICE DEBATES
11. Valuation of ES: challenges and policy use
12. Ecosystem Services in Belgian environmental policy-making:  expectations and challenges linked to the conceptualization and valuation of ES
13. Ecosystem services governance: managing complexity?
14. Ecosystem Service Assessments: science or pragmatism?
15. Negotiated complexity in ecosystem services science and policymaking
16. The natural relation between biodiversity and public health: an ecosystem services perspective
17. Global trade impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services

PART IV ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: TOOLS & PRACTICES
18. CICES going local: Ecosystem services classification adapted for a highly populated country
19. The ecosystem services valuation tool and its future developments
20. EBI - An index for delivery of ecosystem service bundles
21. ES-thinking and some of its implications: a critical note from a rural development perspective
22. Enhancing ecosystem services in Belgian agriculture through agro-ecology: a vision for a farming with a future

PART V ECOSYSTEM SERVICE REFLECTIONS FROM PRACTICE
23. Ecosystem Service Practices: Introduction
24. Reflections from EU policy practice
25. (how) Can  financial institutions contribute to sustainable use of ecosystem services?
26. Making natural capital and ecosystem services operational in Europe through biodiversity offsetting and habitat banking
27. SKB, SNOWMAN and Ecosystem Services
28. Contribution of DG Environment of Federal public Service Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment
29. Relevance of an Ecosystem Services approach in Wallonia
30. A participatory approach to wildlife management in Walloon farmlands
31. Ecosystem Services for Wallonia
32. Relevance of the concept of Ecosystem Services in the practice of Brussels Environment
33. Contribution of the Agency for Nature and Forests
34. Integrating ecosystem services in rural development projects in Flanders
35. Reflection on the relevance and use of Ecosystem Services to the Department LNE
36. Contribution of the Flemish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
37. Contribution of the Flemish Farmers union
38. Ecosystem services of Natuurpunt
39. Ecosystem services - some experiences in educational practice
40. Integrating the concept of Ecosystem Services in the Province of Antwerp: the inland dunes project
41. Bosland: application of the ecosystem services concept in a new style of forest management

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Biography

Sander Jacobs has a PhD in Biology. Since 2005, he has been active researcher working at the University of Antwerp. He studied the interface of fundamental ecology, nature restoration and anthropogenic impacts. Since 2009, he has coordinated a 7 people research team on ecosystem services. The team has coordinated and partnered several scientific and applied projects on regional, national and international scale. Through this work, an active interdisciplinary research community has been established. Although the research team specializes in the biophysical basis of ecosystem service delivery, a widened overview and interaction with other related disciplines has been developed.

Prof. Nicolas Dendoncker is a geographer working at the University of Namur, Belgium. With Sander Jacobs, Dr. Dendoncker coordinates a team of 7 researchers involved in the study of Ecosystem Services. He coordinates the Namur Research Group on Sustainable Development (NaGRIDD). His team develops participatory agent based models (ABM) of land use and environmental change in several Belgian and European projects with case studies in Belgium, The Philippines, Congo and Senegal. Participatory approaches are implemented and the impacts of landscape changes on Ecosystem Services are assessed and sustainable development pathways are proposed. In several projects, ecosystem services are explicitly valued and quantified.

Hans Keune (PhD) is a Political Scientist working at The Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) and the Belgian Biodiversity Platform. He is also affiliated to naXys (Namur Center for Complex Systems), and to the Health and Environment Network and Faculty of Applied Economics, University of Antwerp. He works on critical complexity, inter- and transdisciplinary, action research, decision support methods; environment & health, ecosystem services, biodiversity & public health; experience both in Belgian projects and EU-projects. Currently he is working on ecosystem services, and involved in several Belgian and EU projects on ecosystem services.