When we cannot have it all: Ecosystem services trade-offs in the context of spatial planning

Francis Turkelboom, Michael Leone, Sander Jacobs, Eszter Kelemen, Marina García-Llorente, Francesc Baró, Mette Termansen, David N. Barton, Pam Berry, Erik Stange, Marijke Thoonen, Ágnes Kalóczkai (+25 others)
2018 Ecosystem Services  
Spatial planning have to deal with trade-offs between various stakeholders' wishes and needs as part of planning and management of landscapes, natural resources and/or biodiversity. To make ecosystem services (ES) trade-off research more relevant for spatial planning, we propose an analytical framework, which puts stakeholders, their land-use/management choices, their impact on ES and responses at the centre. Based on 24 cases from around the world, we used this framing to analyse the
more » ... and diversity of real-world ES trade-offs. They cover a wide range of tradeoffs related to ecosystem use: land-use change, management regimes, technical versus nature-based solutions, natural resource use, and management of species. The ES trade-offs studied featured a complexity that was far greater than what is often described in the ES literature. Influential users and context setters are at the core of the trade-off decision making, but most of the impact is felt by noninfluential users. Provisioning and cultural ES were the most targeted in the studied trade-offs, but regulating ES were the most impacted. Stakeholders' characteristics, such as influence, impact faced, and concerns can partially explain their position and response in relation to trade-offs. Based on the research findings, we formulate recommendations for spatial planning. Highlights • Stakeholder choices on ecosystem use are central in ES trade-off analysis. • ES trade-offs analysis needs to embrace the full complexity to be useful for spatial planning. • The impact of trade-offs is often related with the intensity of use of ecosystem. • Regulating ES are rarely the main focus of trade-offs, but often are more impacted than provisioning and cultural ES. • Responses to trade-offs depends on the level of influence and concern of stakeholders.
doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.10.011 fatcat:xbwnvx56mvfgdmvtekfgu4tihy