WRRC and UHERO faculty researcher Leah Bremer and colleagues recently published “An Environmental Perspective on Ecosystem Services” in Ambio.
Mainstreaming of ecosystem service approaches has been proposed as one path toward sustainable development. This article addresses the need for greater guidance on incorporating justice into ecosystem services research and practice. We point to the importance of deep engagement with stakeholders and rights holders to integrate diverse values and knowledge, and to disentangle contextual factors that moderate justice outcomes. This broadened perspective paves a way for transformative ecosystem service assessments, management, and research, which can help inform and design governance structures that nourish human agency to sustainably identify, manage, and enjoy ecosystem services for human wellbeing.
The figure illustrates the justice dimensions intersecting with ecosystem services assessments and management displayed as an iceberg. Rather than measuring the visible, distributive dimension only, we highlight the need to ‘dive deeper’ into the social-ecological system to understand and recognize the value and knowledge plurality as well as capabilities and power structures that underpin the processes of decision-making over ecosystem services.
View article at: Ambio, December 2022, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01812-1