Ecosystem Services, Land-Cover Change, and Stakeholders: Finding a Sustainable Foothold for a Semiarid Biodiversity Hotspot

By Belinda Reyers, P. O’Farrell, Richard M. Cowling, Benis N. Egoh, D. L. Maitre, J. Vlok. 2009

263 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Land-cover change has been identified as one of the most important drivers of change in ecosystems and their services. However, information on the consequences of land cover change for ecosystem services and human well-being at local scales is largely absent. Where information does exist, the traditional methods used to collate and communicate this information represent a significant obstacle to sustainable ecosystem management. Embedding science in a social process and solving problems together with stakeholders are necessary elements in ensuring that new knowledge results in desired actions, behavior changes, and decisions. We have attempted to address this identified information gap, as well as the way information is gathered, by quantifying the local-scale consequences of land-cover change for ecosystem services in the Little Karoo region, a semiarid biodiversity hotspot in South Africa. Our work is part of a stakeholder-engaged process that aims to answer questions inspired by the beneficiaries and managers of ecosystem services. We mapped and quantified the potential supply of, and changes in, five ecosystem services: production of forage, carbon storage, erosion control, water flow regulation, and tourism. Our results demonstrated substantial (20%-50%) declines across ecosystem services as a result of land-cover change in the Little Karoo. We linked these changes in land-cover to the political and land-use history of the region. We found that the natural features that deliver the Little Karoo's ecosystem services, similar to other semiarid regions, are not being managed in a way that recognizes their constraints and vulnerabilities. There is a resulting decline in ecosystem services, leading to an increase in unemployment and vulnerability to shocks, and narrowing future options. We have proposed a way forward for the region that includes immediate action and restoration, mechanisms to fund this action, the development of future economic activity including tourism and carbon markets, and new ways that the science-stakeholder partnership can foster these changes. Although we acknowledge the radical shifts required, we have highlighted the opportunities provided by the resilience and adaptation potential of semiarid regions, their biodiversity, and their inhabitants.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0cede4f557b94d83de272a70cec986afca48c6d7

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Citations in the corpus

Assessing Land Use Change and Its Impact on Ecosystem Services in Northern Thailand (2016, result): “This is in line with many other studies, for example, [53], who stated that the zones of the La Antigua watershed in Mexico with ample forest cover had better quality ecosystem services, and the study by [54], who noted a greater proportion of five ecosystem services in land use categories with undi”
An African account of ecosystem service provision : use, threats and policy options for sustainable livelihoods (2012, background): “The most frequently mapped ecosystem services in Africa were water and fodder provision, climate regulation, together with regulation of water flows, recreation, and tourism (van Jaarsveld et al., 2005; Bohensky et al., 2006; Egoh et al., 2008; Reyers et al., 2009; O’Farrell et al., 2011).”
Ecosystem services and economic development in Austrian agricultural landscapes - The impact of policy and climate change scenarios on trade-offs and synergies (2015, background): “First, some of the studies assess a wide range of ES indicators (c.f. Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2010) but only few focus on biodiversity (Bateman et al., 2013; Bryan and Crossman, 2013; Nelson et al., 2009) or landscape amenities (Bateman et al., 2013; Reyers et al., 2009).”
Mapping social–ecological systems: Identifying ‘green-loop’ and ‘red-loop’ dynamics based on characteristic bundles of ecosystem service use (2015, methodology): “The ecological predictors have previously been used as proxy indicators for the potential supply of ES in landscapes (Egoh et al., 2008; O’Farrell et al., 2011; Reyers et al., 2009; SAfMA, 2004), and were chosen to test the influence of supply on the patterns of ES use in the different social– ecolo”
Multi-functional landscapes in semi arid environments: implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services (2010, background): “Raising awareness, building capacity and supporting decision making within institutional structures that manage land and water issues, particularly local government, would kick-start the development of sustainable multi-functional landscapes (Cowling et al. 2008; Reyers et al. 2009).”
How fundamental plant functional trait relationships scale‐up to trade‐offs and synergies in ecosystem services (2012, background): “The number of case studies investigating patterns of provision of multiple ES has been steadily increasing (e.g. Schröter et al. 2005; Gimona & van der Horst 2007; Nelson et al. 2008; Reyers et al. 2009; Raudsepp-Hearne, Peterson & Bennett 2010).”