Scenarios for Ecosystem Services: An Overview

By Stephen R. Carpenter, E. Bennett, Garry D. Peterson. 2006

403 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) scenarios address changes in ecosystem services and their implications for human well-being. Ecological changes pose special challenges for longterm thinking, because of the possibility of regime shifts that occur rapidly yet alter the availability of ecosystem services for generations. Moreover, ecological feedbacks can intensify human modification of ecosystems, creating a spiral of poverty and ecosystem degradation. Such complex dynamics were evaluated by a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analyses in the MA scenarios. Collectively, the scenarios explore problems such as the connections of poverty reduction and ecosystem services, and trade-offs among ecosystem services. Several promising approaches are considered by the scenarios, including uses of biodiversity to build resilience of ecosystem services, actively adaptive management, and green technology. Although the scenarios do not prescribe an optimal path, they illuminate the consequences of different policies toward ecosystem services.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5789bceaeca966e184e3113f0b5c693c4ccc7a0

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Citations in the corpus

Biodiversity, functional roles and ecosystem services of groundwater invertebrates (2008, background): “…and are extraordinarily difficult to understand because of the comassociated environmental changes are considered responsible plexity of the interdependent components and their non-linear for the current ‘sixth great extinction in the history of life on interactions (Carpenter et al. 2006).”
Participatory Scenario Planning for Protected Areas Management under the Ecosystem Services Framework: the Doñana Social-Ecological System in Southwestern Spain (2011, background): “…2000), the emission of greenhouse gases (Nakišenoviš et al. 2000), the evolution of ecosystem services and their relationship to human well-being (Carpenter et al. 2005, 2006; Pereira et al. 2005; Bohensky et al. 2006), desertification and land degradation (Kok et al. 2004), land-use changes and…”
The potential of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps for semi-quantitative scenario development, with an example from Brazil (2009, background): “Carpenter et al. (2006) conclude that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment considered the risks and consequences of regime shifts, and that resilience played a major role in the scenarios.”
Ecosystem Services in Decision Making: Time to Deliver (2009, background): “…requires interdisciplinary and useroriented research, including: (1) collaborating with stakeholders to define services that people care about (eg Carpenter et al. 2006; Cowling et al. 2008); (2) developing transparent, flexible models of ecological production functions at scales relevant to…”
A Quantitative Review of Urban Ecosystem Service Assessments: Concepts, Models, and Implementation (2014, background): “…interdisciplinary and user-oriented research, including (1) collaborating with stakeholders to define services about which people care (e.g., Carpenter et al. 2006; Cowling et al. 2008), (2) developing transparent, flexible models of ecological production functions at scales relevant to…”
Creating win-wins from trade-offs? Ecosystem services for human well-being: A meta-analysis of ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies in the real world (2014, background): “For example, changing ecosystem components which generate regulating services may undermine the long-term existence of provisioning services (Carpenter et al., 2006).”
When, Where, and How Nature Matters for Ecosystem Services: Challenges for the Next Generation of Ecosystem Service Models (2017, background): “…can potentially substitute for some provisioning and regulating services, most cultural services depend on a genuine experience, often relating to a feeling of wilderness or existence of areas without human interference, which is impossible for other capitals to replicate (Carpenter et al. 2006).”
Payments for ecosystem services as commodity fetishism (2010, background): “Nevertheless, discussions on how to classify ecosystem services to inform natural resource management and policy decisions continue (Carpenter et al., 2006; Boyd and Banzhaf, 2007; Wallace, 2007; Fisher et al., 2009).”
A formal framework for scenario development in support of environmental decision-making (2009, background): “Rather than relying on predictions, scenarios enable a creative and flexible approach to preparing for an uncertain future (e.g. Schwartz, 1991; Van der Heijden, 1996; De Jouvenel, 2004; Means et al., 2005; Carpenter et al., 2006; De Lattre-Gasquet, 2006).”