TY - JOUR
T1 - Trade-offs in ecosystem services and varying stakeholder preferences
T2 - Evaluating conflicts, obstacles, and opportunities
AU - King, Elizabeth
AU - Cavender-Bares, Jeannine
AU - Balvanera, Patricia
AU - Mwampamba, Tuyeni H.
AU - Polasky, Stephen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 by the author(s).
PY - 2015/9
Y1 - 2015/9
N2 - In efforts to increase human well-being while maintaining the natural systems and processes upon which we depend, navigating the trade-offs that can arise between different ecosystem services is a profound challenge. We evaluated a recently developed simple analytic framework for assessing ecosystem service trade-offs, which characterizes such trade-offs in terms of their underlying biophysical constraints as well as divergences in stakeholders’ values for the services in question. Through a workshop and subsequent discussions, we identified four different types of challenging situations under which the framework allows important insights to clarify the nature of stakeholder conflicts, obstacles to promoting more sustainable outcomes, and potential enabling factors to promote efficiency and sustainability of ecosystem service yields. We illustrated the framework’s analytical steps by applying them to case studies representing three of the challenging situations. We explored the fourth challenging situation conceptually, using published literature for examples. We examined the potential utility and feasibility of using the framework as a participatory tool in resource management and conflict resolution. We concluded that the framework can be instrumental for promoting pluralism and insightful analysis of tradeoffs. The insights offered here may be viewed as hypotheses to be tested and refined as additional unforeseen challenges and benefits are revealed as the framework is put into practice.
AB - In efforts to increase human well-being while maintaining the natural systems and processes upon which we depend, navigating the trade-offs that can arise between different ecosystem services is a profound challenge. We evaluated a recently developed simple analytic framework for assessing ecosystem service trade-offs, which characterizes such trade-offs in terms of their underlying biophysical constraints as well as divergences in stakeholders’ values for the services in question. Through a workshop and subsequent discussions, we identified four different types of challenging situations under which the framework allows important insights to clarify the nature of stakeholder conflicts, obstacles to promoting more sustainable outcomes, and potential enabling factors to promote efficiency and sustainability of ecosystem service yields. We illustrated the framework’s analytical steps by applying them to case studies representing three of the challenging situations. We explored the fourth challenging situation conceptually, using published literature for examples. We examined the potential utility and feasibility of using the framework as a participatory tool in resource management and conflict resolution. We concluded that the framework can be instrumental for promoting pluralism and insightful analysis of tradeoffs. The insights offered here may be viewed as hypotheses to be tested and refined as additional unforeseen challenges and benefits are revealed as the framework is put into practice.
KW - Biophysical constraint
KW - Conflict
KW - Ecosystem service
KW - Human values
KW - Participatory tool
KW - Production possibility frontier
KW - Sustainability
KW - Trade-off
KW - Utility
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84943165954&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5751/ES-07822-200325
DO - 10.5751/ES-07822-200325
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84943165954
VL - 20
JO - Conservation Ecology
JF - Conservation Ecology
SN - 1708-3087
IS - 3
M1 - 25
ER -