Reinterpreting change in traditional ecological knowledge

Much of the previous research on Traditional Ecological Knowledge (herefater TEK) has centred in 1) documenting fading knowledge (eg. Ferguson and Messier 1997; Pieroni et al. 2004), 2) understanding the parallel decrease of biological and cultural diversity (Maffi 2005; Harmon and Loh 2010), and 3) assessing the processes and drivers of change that lead to the loss of TEK (Benz et al. 2000; Kingsbury 2001; Godoy et al. 2005; Gray et al. 2008; Turner and Turner 2008). The general argumentative line in those works revolves around lamenting the loss of TEK as indigenous peoples and rural communities modernize and adopt western lifestyles. For example, in the last decade a growing number of studies have reported changes and losses in the medicinal (Begossi et al. 2002; Case et al. 2005; Lozada et al. 2006; Monteiro et al. 2006), nutritional (Turner and Turner 2008), and agricultural (Benz et al. 2007; Stone 2007; Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2010) knowledge of small-scale societies as they become more integrated in national societies and the market economy. The idea that TEK systems are capable of adapting both to external changes and internal frictions has been a mainstay of human ecology for some time (e.g. Berkes et al. 2000). Yet, by analyzing change primarily in terms of lost knowledge, the usual research perspective tends to downplay the dynamic nature of TEK systems, and little emphasis is put in understanding particular changes in TEK as an adaptive response to new environmental, social, or economic conditions. Likewise, few researchers have examined how the culprits of the loss of TEK (i.e., modernization, technology, schooling, or integration into the market economy to name the most commonly mentioned factors) actually affect the mechanisms that allow societies to generate, regenerate, transmit, and apply knowledge. In other words, our understanding of how these processes affect the resilience of TEK systems and their capacity to evolve and adapt is still limited. In this paper, we shift the focus from the analysis of trends in specific bodies of TEK, to the analysis of the factors and conditions that maintain or undermine people's ability to adapt and regenerate TEK in the face of changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. In doing so, we advance our understanding on how factors underlying the loss of TEK affect the mechanisms used by societies to regenerate and transmit such knowledge in the face of global environmental change

Economic incentives for biodiversity conservation: what is the evidence for motivation crowding?

As economic incentives for biodiversity and ecosystem service protection (e.g., payments for ecosystem services) have become widespread in environmental science and policy, a major concern among conservationists and environmental scientists is that economic incentives may undermine people’s intrinsic motivations to conserve biodiversity. In this paper we review the theoretical insights and empirical findings on motivation crowding effects with economic instruments for biodiversity protection. First, we synthesize the psychological mechanisms behind motivation crowding effects relevant for environmental behavior as identified in the specialized literature. We then conduct a systematic review of the empirical evidence. Our results show that, although several empirical studies suggest the existence of crowding-out and crowding-in effects, evidence remains inconclusive due to i) methodological limitations for empirical studies to demonstrate crowding effects, ii) lack of adequate baseline information about pre-existing intrinsic motivations, iii) weak comparability of results across case studies resulting from inconsistent terminology and methods, and iv) the complexity stemming from cultural and contextual heterogeneity. We conclude that, as economic instruments for conservation are increasingly implemented, it becomes paramount to develop robust methodologies for assessing pre-existing intrinsic motivations and changes in people’s motivational structures. To address possible detrimental long term effects for conservation outcomes we call for caution in situations where high uncertainties remain

Mismatches between ecosystem services supply and demand in urban areas : a quantitative assessment in five European cities

Assessing mismatches between ecosystem service (ES) supply and demand can provide relevant insights for enhancing human well-being in urban areas. This paper provides a novel methodological approach to assess regulating ES mismatches on the basis of environmental quality standards and policy goals. Environmental quality standards (EQS) indicate the relationship between environmental quality and human well-being. Thus, they can be used as a common minimum threshold value to determine whether the difference between ES supply and demand is problematic for human well-being. The methodological approach includes three main steps: (1) selection of EQS, (2) definition and quantification of ES supply and demand indicators, and (3) identification and assessment of ES mismatches on the basis of EQS considering certain additional criteria. While ES supply indicators estimate the flow of an ES actually used or delivered, ES demand indicators express the amount of regulation needed in relation to the standard. The approach is applied to a case study consisting of five European cities: Barcelona, Berlin, Stockholm, Rotterdam and Salzburg, considering three regulating ES which are relevant in urban areas: air purification, global climate regulation and urban temperature regulation. The results show that levels of ES supply and demand are highly heterogeneous across the five studied cities and across the EQS considered. The assessment shows that ES supply contributes very moderately in relation to the compliance with the EQS in most part of the identified mismatches. Therefore, this research suggests that regulating ES supplied by urban green infrastructure are expected to play only a minor or complementary role to other urban policies intended to abate air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions at the city scale. The approach has revealed to be appropriate for the regulating ES air purification and global climate regulation, for which well-established standards or targets are available at the city level. Yet, its applicability to the ES urban temperature regulation has proved more problematic due to scale and user dependent constraints

Traditional ecological knowledge and global environmental change : research findings and policy implications

This paper introduces the special feature of Ecology and Society entitled "Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change. The special feature addresses two main research themes. The first theme concerns the resilience of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (hereafter TEK) and the conditions that might explain its loss or persistence in the face of global change. The second theme relates to new findings regarding the way in which TEK strengthens community resilience to respond to the multiple stressors of global environmental change. Those themes are analyzed using case studies from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Theoretical insights and empirical findings from the studies suggest that despite the generalized worldwide trend of TEK erosion, substantial pockets of TEK persist in both developing and developed countries. A common trend on the studies presented here is hybridization, where traditional knowledge, practices, and beliefs are merged with novel forms of knowledge and technologies to create new knowledge systems. The findings also reinforce previous hypotheses pointing at the importance of TEK systems as reservoirs of experiential knowledge that can provide important insights for the design of adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with global environmental change. Based on the results from papers in this feature, we discuss policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience

Coneixements ecològics tradicionals en perill

La pressió que ha sofert el camp, per la intensificació de la producció en les últimes dècades, ha provocat l'abandonament de certs coneixements tradicionals de gran valor ecològic. Aquest treball, desenvolupat per investigadors de la UAB i la Universitat Autònoma de Madrid, ha palesat l'alteració en el coneixement transmès en les tres últimes generacions de ramaders i d'agricultors al voltant de l'Espai Natural de Doñana, entre Huelva i Sevilla.La presión que ha sufrido el campo, por la intensificación de la producción en las últimas décadas, ha provocado el abandono de ciertos conocimientos tradicionales de gran valor ecológico. El presente trabajo, desarrollado por investigadores de la UAB y la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, ha puesto de manifiesto la alteración en el conocimiento transmitido en las tres últimas generaciones de ganaderos y agricultores en los alrededores del Espacio Natural de Doñana, entre Huelva y Sevilla

Ecosystem service bundles along the urban-rural gradient : insights for landscape planning and management

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) Grups de recerca: Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ) Laboratori d'Anàlisi de Sistemes Socioecològics en la Globalització (LASEG)A key challenge of landscape planning and management is coping with multiple ecosystem service (ES) potentials and needs in complex social-ecological systems such as urban regions. However, few studies have analyzed both the supply and demand sides of ES bundles, i.e., sets of associated ES that repeatedly appear together across time or space. This paper advances a framework to identify, map and assess ES bundles from a supply-demand approach to inform landscape planning and management. The framework is applied to the Barcelona metropolitan region, Spain, covering five ES and using eleven spatial indicators. Each indicator was quantified and mapped at the municipal level (n=164) combining different proxy- and process-based models. Our results show significant associations among ES, both at the supply and demand sides. Further, we identified five distinct ES supply-demand bundle types and characterized them based on their specific ES relationships and their main underlying social-ecological conditions. From our findings, we contend that land sharing strategies should be prioritized in urban and agricultural areas to increase landscape multifunctionality while assuring the conservation of large periurban forest areas that are critical for delivering a wide range of local ES highly demanded by the urban population

Contribution of ecosystem services to air quality and climate change mitigation policies : the case of urban forests in Barcelona, Spain

Mounting research highlights the contribution of ecosystem services provided by urban forests to quality of life in cities, yet these services are rarely explicitly considered in environmental policy targets. We quantify regulating services provided by urban forests and evaluate their contribution to comply with policy targets of air quality and climate change mitigation in the municipality of Barcelona, Spain. We apply the i-Tree Eco model to quantify in biophysical and monetary terms the ecosystem services "air purification," "global climate regulation," and the ecosystem disservice "air pollution" associated with biogenic emissions. Our results show that the contribution of urban forests regulating services to abate pollution is substantial in absolute terms, yet modest when compared to overall city levels of air pollution and GHG emissions. We conclude that in order to be effective, green infrastructure-based efforts to offset urban pollution at the municipal level have to be coordinated with territorial policies at broader spatial scales

Exploring intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values for sustainable management of social-ecological systems

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552The values (i.e., importance) that people place on ecosystems have been identified as a crucial dimension of sustainable management of social-ecological systems. Recently, the call for integrating plural values of ecosystems beyond intrinsic and instrumental values has prompted the notion of "relational values." With the aim of contributing to environmental management, we assess the environmental motivations (i.e., egoistic, biospheric, altruistic) and values that people attribute to the ecosystems of the mid-upper stream of the Otún River watershed, central Andes, Colombia. We analyzed 589 questionnaires that were collected in urban and rural areas of the Otún River watershed using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test and logistic regressions. We found salient biospheric motivations and the attribution of plural values (i.e., intrinsic, relational, and instrumental) to the ecosystems of the mid-upper stream of the Otún River watershed. Particularly, relational values were the most frequently mentioned value domain. Further, our results showed that environmental motivations and socioeconomic factors are associated with the expression of different value domains. We found negative associations between egoistic motivations and intrinsic values and between rural respondents and instrumental values. We found positive associations between altruistic motivations and relational values and between rural respondents and both intrinsic and relational values. In light of our results, we argue that intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values coexist in people's narratives about the importance of ecosystems. Plural valuation approaches could be enhanced by differentiating relational from instrumental values and by expressing them in nonmonetary terms. We argue that multiple values of ecosystems expressed by rural and urban societies should be included in environmental management to tackle social conflicts and consider the diverse needs and interests of different social actors

Ethical considerations in on-ground applications of the ecosystem services concept

The ecosystem services (ES) concept is one of the main avenues for conveying society's dependence on natural ecosystems. On-ground applications of the concept are now widespread and diverse and include its use as a communication tool, for policy guidance and priority setting, and for designing economic instruments for conservation. Each application raises ethical considerations beyond traditional controversies related to the monetary valuation of nature. We review ethical considerations across major on-ground applications and group them into the following categories: anthropocentric framing, economic metaphor, monetary valuation, commodification, sociocultural impact, changes in motivations, and equity implications. Different applications of the ES concept raise different suites of ethical issues, and we propose methods to address the issues most relevant to each application. We conclude that the ES concept should be considered as only one among various alternative approaches to valuing nature and that reliance on economic metaphors can exclude other motivations for protecting ecosystems

Contribución del verde de Barcelona a la calidad del aire y la mitigación del cambio climático

[ES] Cada vez más estudios científicos destacan la contribución de los servicios ecosistémicos generados por el verde urbano en relación a la calidad de vida en las ciudades. En este estudio cuantificamos en valores biofísicos y monetarios, los servicios ecosistémicos de regulación ‘filtración del aire’ y ‘secuestro de carbono’ proporcionados por el verde urbano (principalmente arbolado) del municipio de Barcelona mediante la aplicación del modelo iTree Eco. Asimismo, también evaluamos la contribución de estos servicios en relación a los objetivos de calidad del aire y mitigación del cambio climático de la ciudad. Los resultados muestran que la contribución del verde urbano en la reducción de la contaminación atmosférica es relevante en términos absolutos, pero moderada si se compara con los niveles totales de contaminación del aire y emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) de la ciudad. Nuestra conclusión principal es que, para ser eficaces, las políticas basadas en la mejora de la infraestructura verde urbana en relación a la calidad ambiental de Barcelona se tienen que coordinar conjuntamente con medidas de reducción de emisiones.Baró, F.; Chaparro, L.; Gómez-Baggethun, E.; Langemeyer, J.; Nowak, DJ.; Terrades, J. (2014). Contribución del verde de Barcelona a la calidad del aire y la mitigación del cambio climático. En XVI CONGRESO NACIONAL DE ARBORICULTURA. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 15-30. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/91324OCS153