Applying ecosystem services for pre‐market environmental risk assessments of regulated stressors

Ecosystem services (ES ) are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Investigating the environment through an ES framework has gained wide acceptance in the international scientific community and is applied by policymakers to protect biodiversity and safeguard the sustainability of ecosystems. This approach can enhance the ecological and societal relevance of pre‐market/prospective environmental risk assessments (ERA s) of regulated stressors by: (1) informing the derivation of operational protection goals; (2) enabling the integration of environmental and human health risk assessments; (3) facilitating horizontal integration of policies and regulations; (4) leading to more comprehensive and consistent environmental protection; (5) articulating the utility of, and trade‐offs involved in, environmental decisions; and (6) enhancing the transparency of risk assessment results and the decisions based upon them. Realisation of these advantages will require challenges that impede acceptance of an ES approach to be overcome. Particularly, there is concern that, if biodiversity only matters to the extent that it benefits humans, the intrinsic value of nature is ignored. Moreover, our understanding of linkages among ecological components and the processes that ultimately deliver ES is incomplete, valuing ES is complex, and there is no standard ES lexicon and limited familiarity with the approach. To help overcome these challenges, we encourage: (1) further research to establish biodiversity–ES relationships; (2) the development of approaches that (i) quantitatively translate responses to chemical stressors by organisms and groups of organisms to ES delivery across different spatial and temporal scales, (ii) measure cultural ES and ease their integration into ES valuations, and (iii) appropriately value changes in ES delivery so that trade‐offs among different management options can be assessed; (3) the establishment of a standard ES lexicon; and (4) building capacity in ES science and how to apply ES to ERA s. These development needs should not prevent movement towards implementation of an ES approach in ERA s, as the advantages we perceive of using this approach render it more than worthwhile to tackle those challenges. Society and the environment stand to benefit from this shift in how we conduct the ERA of regulated stressors

Multifaceted value profiles of forest owner categories in South Sweden: The river helge å catchment as a case study

Forest landscapes provide benefits from a wide range of goods, function and intangible values. But what are different forest owner categories\u27 profiles of economic use and non-use values? This study focuses on the complex forest ownership pattern of the River Helge å catchment including the Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve in southern Sweden. We made 89 telephone interviews with informants representing the four main forest owner categories. Our mapping included consumptive and non-consumptive direct use values, indirect use values, and non-use values such as natural and cultural heritage. While the value profiles of non-industrial forest land owners and municipalities included all value categories, the forest companies focused on wood production, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on nature protection. We discuss the challenges of communicating different forest owners\u27 economic value profiles among stakeholders, the need for a broader suite of forest management systems, and fora for collaborative planning. © 2013 The Author(s)

Valuing nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach

Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and often conflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for the inclusive valuation of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) in decision making, as well as broad methodological steps for doing so. While developed within the context of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable to initiatives at the knowledge–policy interface, which require a pluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. We argue that transformative practices aiming at sustainable futures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stakeholder groups that hold different values on human nature-relations and NCP

Humanvetenskapen står för djup och förståelse

Kvalitativ humanvetenskaplig forskning är en oumbärlig del i integrerad forskning kring hållbar utveckling och klimatförändringar för att förstå normer och praktik, motsägelser och paradoxer i människors miljörelationer. Då miljöforskning fokuserar på kulturella aspekter tillförs djup och nya perspektiv öppnas som breddar lösningshorisonten. Kvalitativ humanvetenskaplig forskning är en grundläggande förutsättning för att förstå relationen människa – miljö och ett forskningsfält som måste värderas på sina egna villkor

Do cows belong in nature? The cultural basis of agriculture in Sweden and Australia

Within the now extensive recent literature on cultures of nature, agriculture has received less attention than might have been expected given its threshold role in transforming human relations with the earth and with plants and animals. The concept and practice of agriculture can be understood as central to the emergence and maintenance of the culture/nature dichotomy within Western thought and practice. In this paper we use the comparative cases of Sweden and Australia to examine the differential and contingent positioning of agriculture with respect to that which is understood as nature. Broadly speaking, some parts of agriculture are understood to belong to nature in Sweden through a long history. This is not the case in Australia, where the short agricultural history is positioned in contrast to nature. This affects the way in which biodiversity and environmental protection takes place - in Sweden as part of farming, - in Australia in spite of it. We argue that these cultural differences have been more important than generally recognised in debates over multifunctional agriculture. We discuss the environmental management implications of the two different models in a context made more dynamic by climate change. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd