A review of conceptual frameworks arising from the ESPA programme
Authors | Keane, A. |
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Year of Publication | 2016 |
Type of Publication | Working Paper |
Abstract
Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a more detailed and nuanced view has emerged of the contribution that ecosystems make to human wellbeing. There is growing consensus that the linkages between ecosystem services and wellbeing are multiple and complex, that they act along both direct and indirect pathways, that they will often include feedback loops and interactions, and that their characteristics vary between different types of ecosystem service, across different components of wellbeing or poverty and over different scales.
Accompanying this, there is increasing recognition that ecosystems do not automatically generate services, but that they are realised through inputs of human capital and labour. ESPA research has contributed to this emerging view through the creation of conceptual frameworks which serve to guide and organise thinking, clarifying our understanding of the links between ecosystem services and wellbeing and highlighting further challenges that must be overcome.
This report reviews eighteen such frameworks. Three of them set out to address the ‘bigger picture’, capturing elements that would be broadly applicable across multiple sites, scales and applications, while others have focussed on key themes such as fairness, equity and justice, the multiple dimensions of human wellbeing and the spatial dynamics of ecosystem services or targeted specific challenges related to ecosystem services such as emerging zoonotic infections, food security, climate change and biodiversity-poverty linkages. One of the clearest messages emerging from ESPA frameworks is the central role of humans and the need for research, management and policy to differentiate between actors in terms of their roles, characteristics, and preferences and to consider how the outcomes of ecosystem service-related governance differ between groups. In this respect, ESPA frameworks also provide tools for clarifying which actors are most able to benefit from ecosystem services, and developed conceptual models for analysing the fairness and effectiveness of ecosystem service management.
Taken together, the frameworks suggest that maximising the potential of ecosystem services to contribute to human wellbeing will require biophysical, social, economic, political and institutional processes to be understood and managed in a coordinated way. These processes interact, operate at different spatial and temporal scales, and may respond in different and unpredictable ways to intervention. Moving forward, a key challenge will be to learn how to study and manage these complex social-ecological-political systems in order to contribute effectively and equitably to poverty alleviation.