The article analyses the implication of private sector representatives in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) (2001–2005). The article shows that, before this international biodiversity assessment, firms were involved in three coalitions: the greenhouse gas pro‐trading coalition, the voluntary private standard coalition and the payment for environmental services coalition. These three coalitions all advocated a particular style of regulation that gave overwhelming emphasis to market‐based policy instruments. Corporate experts from the three coalitions identified were recruited to participate in the MEA. Thanks to the political visibility given to the ecosystem services concept by the MEA, private industry was able to strengthen and legitimize its actions in favour of market‐based environmental governance. At the same time, associating private sector representatives with the MEA process made it easier to disseminate the concept of ecosystem services.
Species and habitats are the subjects of legislation that mandates reporting of information on ecosystem conditions. Improvements in sensors, sampling platforms, information systems, and collaborations among experts and information users now enables more effective and up-to-date information to meet regional and national needs. Specifically, advances in environmental DNA (eDNA)-based assessments of biodiversity, community science data, various underwater imaging devices, and environmental, behavioral, and physiology observations from animal telemetry provide new opportunities to address multiple requirements for reporting status and trends, including insights into life in the deep ocean. Passive and active acoustic sensors help monitor marine life, boat traffic, and noise pollution. Satellites provide repeated, frequent, and long-term records of many relevant variables from global to local scales and, when combined with numerical computer simulations, allow planning for future scenarios. Metadata standards facilitate the transfer of data from machine to machine, thus streamlining assessments and forecasting and providing knowledge directly to the public. The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) facilitates this exchange of information on life in the sea. The collaborative efforts of the Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS) of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System and its partners provide an example of a regional MBON process for information delivery. This includes linking policy and management needs, prioritizing observing data from various platforms and methods, streamlining data handling practices, and delivering information for management such as for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem, with iterative process adaptation.
Entre 2001 et 2005, quelque 1 360 experts mobilisés dans le Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) ont fourni, à partir d'une évaluation scientifique, un rapport destiné aux décideurs politiques. Depuis la parution du MA en 2005, une notion très peu utilisée comme celle de service écosystémique (SE) est ainsi passée, en l'espace de quelques années, d'une position de confinement dans des milieux scientifiques restreints (biologie et écologie de la conservation), à une position centrale dans les analyses et la formulation de problématiques environnementales. La notion est toutefois apparue tardivement en France. Notre article contribue à mieux comprendre le désintérêt français pour la notion de SE avant la parution du MA. Les experts scientifiques français, quel que soit leur statut (chercheur, maître de conférences, professeur) ou leur discipline (écologie, biologie, économie, etc.) ne se sont pas impliqués dans le MA, alors que quelques années avant le MA, lors du Global Biodiversity Assessment (1993-1995), le précédent exercice d'évaluation internationale de la biodiversité, ils s'étaient au contraire fortement mobilisés. Pour expliquer ce désintérêt, l'article analyse le rôle des ministères de la Recherche et de l'Environnement, et les clivages structurels entre le monde de la recherche d'un côté et le monde politique de l'autre. En outre, l'enquête montre que la culture professionnelle des scientifiques français et leurs intérêts stratégiques ne les poussent pas à s'investir réellement dans ce type d'exercice.
Assessments of environmental issues are often expected to tackle the perceived disconnect between scientific knowledge and environmental policy making. However, their actual influence on processes of knowledge communication and use remains understudied. We provide one of the first studies of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), itself one of the first national-level assessments of ecosystem services. We explore expectations, early experiences, and implications for its role in promoting knowledge use, drawing on both documentary evidence and qualitative analysis of interviews with NEA authors and potential users. Many interviewees expected instrumental use; that is, facts directly assisting problem solving. This matches the rhetoric surrounding the NEA's creation. However, we found more early evidence of interacting conceptual uses (learning), and strategic uses (sometimes deemed misuse). Such uses depend not only on assessment outputs, such as reports, but also on the processes of communication and interaction by which these are created. Thus, planning and analysis of such assessments should deemphasise instrumental use and instead focus on the complex knowledge 'coproduction' processes by which diverse and interacting forms of knowledge use may be realised.
Published in 2005, the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) stressed that influencing governments, businesses and communities to address the supra-national challenge of limiting biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation requires a fuller understanding of the range of values and benefits people derive from ecosystems, including tourism. The MA was informed by, and has shaped, several conceptually and methodologically distinctive sub-global assessments (SGAs) of ecosystem services. Through content analysis, this paper is the first detailed examination of how tourism features in 14 extant SGAs identified in a database held by a major supra-national environmental organization. Although the SGAs should have incorporated the widest range of specialist subject expertise, tourism scholars played only peripheral roles in producing them even for territories where tourism is a significant land use. The SGAs examined did not benefit from the extensive body of knowledge relating to sustainable tourism. Limited portrayals of tourism restrict the capacity of SGAs in their current format as management solutions. It is also contradictory to the ethos, principles and purpose of ecosystem assessments. With the ecosystem services perspective set to become more important to policy and decision making, the paper argues for greater incorporation of recent progress in sustainable tourism in ecosystem assessment. ; This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sustainable Tourism on 20/03/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09669582.2017.1291649 Would have had 18 months embargo according to https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/19870 but it was deposited to UoB repository long after embargo period ended (ended on 20/09/2018). It had also been deposited to Brighton University Repository before UoB deposit (https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/publications/tourism-in-sub-global-assessments-of-ecosystem-services). CBoula, 25/10/2021
The paper seeks to contribute to the expanding literature on ecosystem service assessment by considering its integration with economic analyses of such services. Focussing upon analyses for future orientated policy and decision making, we initially consider a single period during which ecological stocks are maintained at sustainable levels. The flow of ecosystems services and their contribution to welfare bearing goods is considered and methods for valuing resultant benefits are reviewed and illustrated via a case study of land use change. We then broaden our time horizon to discuss the treatment of future costs and benefits. Finally we relax our sustainability assumption and consider economic approaches to the incorporation of depleting ecological assets with a particular focus upon stocks which exhibit thresholds below which restoration is compromised.
The invertebrate group is not considered in environmental studies. When they are remembered, the studies are vague, superficial and do not give the due importance that the group has in the ecosystem dynamics. This paper aimed at placing the terrestrial mollusks in the discussion agenda of complex socio-ecological systems and analyzed the interactions of these mollusks with the other components of the socio-ecological subsystems. The analysis was based on the theoretical-methodological framework proposed by Ostrom and discussed how terrestrial mollusks have the potential to support actions for decision-making in biodiversity conservation, public health and local economy. The framework presented four subsystems categorized as ecological, political, social and economic, with the Sooretama Biological Reserve in the Northern state of Espirito Santo as a geographical boundary. The results allow us to perceive that terrestrial mollusks have essential characteristics that reflect into ecosystem health, acting in an integrated way with the dynamics of environmental services and the equilibrium of habitats.
