Decisión making and decisión support systems for balancing Socio-Economic and Natural Capital Development.

The paper discusses briefly a hierarchical spatio-temporal framework to study globalization, economics and ecology for better understanding and conceptualization of the balance between biodiversity and Natural Capital (NC) on one side, and the Socio-Economic Systems (SES), on the other side, which was designed based on the recent achievements in the field of Systems Ecology. Based on the conceptual clarification of the dynamic condictions for sustainability and on an extensive review of the most recent literature, there are proposed and discussed the decision support system and decision making model as the operational interface between Natural Capital components and Socio-Economic Systems, which might enable to establish and maintain the balance among them. The identified weaknesses and gaps in the structure and function of the Decision Support System (DSS) show the need for extensive and long term research and integrated monitoring and for development and improvement of the methodology and tools.Sin resume

Lower Danube Wetlands System (LDWS).

Sin resume

Adoption of the ecosystem services concept in EU policies

The concept of ecosystem services has gained a strong political profile during the last 15 years. However, there is no specific EU policy devoted to governing ecosystem services. This article shows that the ecosystem services concept is already embedded in recent EU (environmentally-related) policies, such as the Biodiversity Strategy 2020 and the Invasive Alien Species Regulation. Our review of 12 policies shows that, overall, the coherence between existing policies and the ecosystem services concept is moderate. Policies showing very high coherence are confined to the policy arenas that address natural ecosystems, forestry, or agriculture. Given the sectoral nature of most EU policies and the limited options for revision in the near future, opportunities for improving coherence are most apparent in furthering the integration of the ecosystem services concept in the implementation of existing EU policies at national and regional levels

Groundwater dependent ecosystems. Part I: Hydroecological status and trends

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Ecosytem services: A rapid assessment method tested at 35 sites of the LTER-Europe Network

The identification of parameters to monitor the ecosystem services delivered at a site is fundamental to the concept’s adoption as a useful policy instrument at local, national and international scales. In this paper we (i) describe the process of developing a rapid comprehensive ecosystem service assessment methodology and (ii) test the applicability of the protocol at 35 long-term research (LTER) sites across 14 countries in the LTER-Europe network (www.lter-europe.net) including marine, urban, agricultural, forest, desert and conservation sites. An assessment of probability of occurrence with estimated confidence score using 83 ecosystem service parameters was tested. The parameters were either specific services like food production or proxies such as human activities which were considered surrogates for cultural diversity and economic activity. This initial test of the ecosystem service parameter list revealed that the parameters tested were relatively easy to score by site managers with a high level of certainty (92% scored as either occurring or not occurring at the site with certainty of over 90%). Based on this assessment, we concluded that (i) this approach to operationalise the concept of ecosystem services is practical and applicable by many sectors of civil society as a first screen of the ecosystem services present at a site, (ii) this study has direct relevance to land management and policy decision makers as a transparent vehicle to focus testing scenarios and target data gathering, but (iii) further work beyond the scale investigated here is required to ensure global applicability

Combining policy analyses, exploratory scenarios, and integrated modelling to assess land use policy options

Scenario-based approaches provide decision makers with accessible storylines of potential future changes. The parameterisation of such storylines as input variables for integrated assessment models allows using models as a test bed for assessing the effects of alternative land use policy options in different scenarios. However, the potential of this kind of policy-screening analysis can be further improved by assessing the institutional compatibility of the policy options under review. The aim of this paper is to explore the added value of combining institutions-oriented policy analyses with scenario-modelling approaches for improved assessments of EU land use policy options. We describe an expert-based, stepwise process to combine four scenario storylines and two integrated assessment model approaches (CLIMSAVE & IMAGE-GLOBIO) with a procedure for institutional compatibility assessment. Among the subsidies we assessed were those for technology-driven intensification of agricultural production, which would contribute to decreasing demand for cropland across a range of scenarios. In regionalised policy designs, they also contribute to ecological effectiveness, and higher costs of governing. Subsidies to promote biomass production can have negative effects on ecosystems including land conversion, conversion of grassland into cropland as well as conversion of natural forests into managed forests. These effects can to some extent be mitigated by careful policy design which considers the institutional context and features cross-sectoral coordination. An integrated Ecosystem Services Framework policy could accommodate regionalised policy designs and cross-sectoral coordination, however, it can operate only under specific circumstances and needs particular efforts. Rural development approaches are another alternative which feature expansion of cropland by means of a large-scale, bottom-up transformation based on voluntary changes in behaviour, flexibility, participation, and local and regional collaboration. Apart from a vast number of interdisciplinary lessons learned, we also gained insights from the science-policy interface. A weak EU appeared as a plausible scenario from a scientific perspective, given the current political environment. However, it appreaded to be unacceptable at EU level policy making. We decided to maintain scientific independence and looked at policy options also in the context of a weak EU yielding environmentally beneficial opportunities for regional decision making at the expense of relevance of our scenarios to EU level policy makers

New EU-scale environmental scenarios until 2050 – scenario process and initial scenario applications

Understanding uncertainties and risks can be considered to be the main motivation behind environmental scenario studies to assess potential economic, environmental, social or technical developments and their expected consequences for society and environment. The scenario study presented in this paper was designed to contribute to the question of how natural capital and ecosystem services may evolve in Europe under different socio-environmental conditions. The study was conducted as part of OpenNESS, an on-going EU FP7 research project. We present the iterative participatory scenario process, the storylines and drivers, examples for regional applications, as well as initial feedback from stakeholders. In a participatory iterative approach four scenarios were developed for the period to 2050, involving regional and EU-level users and stakeholders. Subsequently, scenarios were successfully contextualised and applied in regional place-based studies under widely differing socio-environmental conditions. Regional teams used different approaches to adapt storylines and drivers to the regional contexts. In an internal evaluation process among regional stakeholders some participants expressed concerns about the scenario method. Suggestions are made how to overcome these limitations. However, most participants approved the scenario method, especially in terms of provoking discussions, and confirmed the usefulness and applicability of the approach