The normal and healthy function of ecosystems is not only of importance in conserving biodiversity, it is of utmost importance for human wellbeing as well. Ecosystems provide us with a wealth of valuable ecosystem services from food to clean water and fuel, without which our societies would crumble. However it is rare that only a single person, group or organisation places demands on any given ecosystem service, and in many cases multiple stakeholders compete over the use of the natural world. In these cases, although trade-offs are common, win-win scenarios are also possible, and recent research by GEE academics investigates how we can achieve these win-wins in our use of ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services depend upon the ecological communities that produce them and are rarely the product of a single species in isolation. Instead, ecosystem services are provided by the complex interaction of multiple species within a particular ecological community. A great deal of research interest in recent years has focussed on ensuring we maintain ecosystem services into the long term, however pressure on ecosystem services worldwide lis likely to increase as human demands on natural resources soars. Ecosystem services are influenced by complex ecosystem feedback relationships and food-web dynamics that are still relatively poorly understood, and increased pressures on ecosystems may lead to unexpected consequences. Although economical signals respond rapidly to global and national changes, ecosystem services are thought to lag behind, often by decades, making it difficult to predict and fully understand how our actions are influences the availability of crucial services in the future.

Trade-offs in the use of ecosystem services occur when the provision of one ecosystem service is reduced by increased use of another, or when one stakeholder takes more of an ES at the expense of other stakeholders. However, this needn’t be the case – in some scenarios it is possible to achieve win-win outcomes, preserving ecosystem services and providing stakeholders the resources they need. Although attractive, win-win scenarios may be difficult to achieve without carefully planned interventions, and recent research from GEE indicates they are not as common as we might like.

In a comprehensive meta-analaysis of ecosystem services case studies from 2000 to 2013, GEE academics Prof Georgina Mace and Dr Caroline Howe show that trade-offs are far more common than win-win scenarios. Across 92 studies covering over 200 recorded trade-offs or synergies in the use of ecosystem services, trade-offs were three times more common than win-wins. The authors identified a number of factors that tended to lead to trade-offs rather than synergies. In particular, if one or more of the stakeholders has a private interest in the natural resources available, trade-offs are much more likely – 81% of cases like this resulted in tradeoffs. Furthermore, trade-offs were far more common when the ecosystem services in question were ‘provisioning’ in nature – products we directly harvest from nature such as food, timber, water, minerals and energy. Win-wins are more common when regulating (e.g. nutrient cycling and water purification) or cultural (e.g. spiritual or historical value) ecosystem services are in question. In the case of trade-offs, there were also factors that predicted who the ‘winners’ would be – winners were three times more likely to hold private interest in the natural resource in question, and tended to be wealthier than loosing stakeholders. Overall, there was no generalisable context that predicted win-win scenarios, suggesting that although trade-off indicators may be useful in strategic planning, the outcome of our use of ecosystem services is not inevitable, and win-wins are possible.

They also identified major gaps in the literature that need to be addressed if we are to gain a better understanding of how win-win scenarios may be possible in human use of ecosystems. In particular, case studies are currently only available for a relatively limited geographic distribution, and tend to focus of provisioning services. Thus, the lower occurrence of trade-offs for regulating and cultural ecosystem services may be in part a reflection of a paucity of data on these type of services. Finally, relatively few studies have attempted to explore the link between trade-offs and synergies in ecosystem services and the ultimate effect on human well-being.

Understanding how and why trade-offs and synergies occurs in our use of ecosystem services will be valuable in planning for win-win scenarios from the outset. Planning of this kind may be necessary if we are to achieve and maintain balance in our use of the natural world in the future.

Original Article:

This research was made possible by support from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme, which is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the UK Department for International Development (ERC)