Scenarios for land use and ecosystem services under global change

Scenarios provide a platform to explore the provision of ecosystem services under global change. Despite their relevance to land-use policy, there is a paucity of such assessments, particularly in developing countries. Central Chile provides a good example from the Latin American realm as the region has experienced rapid transformation from natural landscapes to urbanization and agricultural development. Local experts from Central Chile identified climate change, urbanization, and fire regimes as key drivers of change. Scenarios depicting plausible future trajectories of change were developed to assess the combined effects on carbon storage, wine production, and scenic beauty for the year 2050. Across the region, the action of the drivers reduced the total amount of carbon storage (by 85) and wine production (by 52) compared with a baseline scenario, with minor changes incurred for scenic beauty. The carbon storage and wine production had declined by 90 and scenic beauty by 28 when the reaction to changed fire regimes was also taken into account. The cumulative outcomes of climate change and urbanization are likely to place substantial pressures on ecosystem services in Central Chile by mid-century, revealing the need for stronger planning regulations to manage land-use change. © 2017 Elsevier B.V

Inequality in access to cultural ecosystem services from protected areas in the Chilean biodiversity hotspot

Experiences with nature through visits to protected areas provide important cultural ecosystem services that have the potential to strengthen pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Understanding accessibility to protected areas and likely preferences for enjoying the benefits of nature visits are key factors in identifying ways to reduce inequality in access and inform the planning and management for future protected areas. We develop, at a regional scale, a novel social media database of visits to public protected areas in part of the Chilean biodiversity hotspot using geotagged photographs and assess the inequality of access using the home locations of the visitors and socio-economic data. We find that 20 of the population of the region make 87 of the visits to protected areas. The larger, more biodiverse protected areas were the most visited and provided most cultural ecosystem services. Wealthier people tend to travel further to visit protected areas while people with lower incomes tend to visit protected areas that are closer to home. By providing information on the current spatial flows of people to protected areas, we demonstrate the need to expand the protected area network, especially in lower income areas, to reduce inequality in access to the benefits from cultural ecosystem services provided by nature to people. © 2018 Elsevier B.V

Making decisions for managing ecosystem services

Numerous assessments have quantified, mapped, and valued the services provided by ecosystems that are important for human wellbeing. However, much of the literature does not clarify how the information gathered in such assessments could be used to inform decisions that will impact ecosystem services. We propose that the process of making management decisions for ecosystem services comprises five core steps: identification of the problem and its social–ecological context; specification of objectives and associated performance measures; defining alternative management actions and evaluating the consequences of these actions; assessment of trade-offs and prioritization of alternative management actions; and making management decisions. We synthesize the degree to which the peer-reviewed ecosystem services literature has captured these steps. For the ecosystem service paradigm to gain traction in science and policy arenas, future ecosystem service assessments should have clearly articulated objectives, seek to evaluate the consequences of alternative management actions, and facilitate closer engagement between scientists and stakeholders

El histórico Acuerdo de Escazú: una oportunidad para integrar democracia, derechos humanos y conservación transfronteriza [The historic Escazú Agreement: an opportunity to integrate democracy, human rights and transboundary conservation]

América Latina y el Caribe (ALC) es una de las regiones con mayor biodiversidad, sin embargo, esta se encuentra amenazada por la sobreexplotación de recursos naturales y por conflictos sociales internos. En el 2018, 33 países de la región ALC fueron invitados a firmar y ratificar el histórico Acuerdo de Escazú, el cual es el primer acuerdo de carácter vinculante que integra de manera explícita los derechos humanos con la protección de líderes ambientales. Este acuerdo también promueve la participación en toma de decisiones ambientales y fomenta la cooperación entre países para la protección ambiental y social. No obstante, hace falta mecanismos claros para la implementación de las ideas del Acuerdo. Nosotros identificamos disposiciones claves dentro del acuerdo y las conectamos con mecanismos tangibles que integran derechos humanos y la conservación de la naturaleza. Estos mecanismos incluyen soluciones basadas en tecnología (ej., datos de libre acceso), capital social (ej., acompañamiento legal de equipos multidisciplinares) y capital natural (ej., el manejo de especies transfronterizas). Como los recursos ambientales (y sus amenazas) transcienden fronteras, las disposiciones del Acuerdo enfocadas en colaboración y participación podrían catalizar el manejo ambiental transfronterizo de una manera coordinada

Framing natural assets for advancing sustainability research: translating different perspectives into actions

Sustainability is a key challenge for humanity in the context of complex and unprecedented global changes. Future Earth, an international research initiative aiming to advance global sustainability science, has recently launched knowledge–action networks (KANs) as mechanisms for delivering its research strategy. The research initiative is currently developing a KAN on “natural assets” to facilitate and enable action-oriented research and synthesis towards natural assets sustainability. ‘Natural assets’ has been adopted by Future Earth as an umbrella term aiming to translate and bridge across different knowledge systems and different perspectives on peoples’ relationships with nature. In this paper, we clarify the framing of Future Earth around natural assets emphasizing the recognition on pluralism and identifying the challenges of translating different visions about the role of natural assets, including via policy formulation, for local to global sustainability challenges. This understanding will be useful to develop inter-and transdisciplinary solutions for human–environmental problems by (i) embracing richer collaborative decision processes and building bridges across different perspectives; (ii) giving emphasis on the interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic drivers affecting the future trends of investments and disinvestments in natural assets; and (iii) focusing on social equity, power relationships for effective application of the natural assets approach. This understanding also intends to inform the scope of the natural asset KAN’s research agenda to mobilize the translation of research into co-designed action for sustainability

The landmark Escazu Agreement: An opportunity to integrate democracy, human rights, and transboundary conservation

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the world's most biodiverse regions, but this diversity is threatened by the overexploitation of natural resources and internal social conflicts. In 2018, 33 LAC countries were invited to sign and ratify the landmark Escazú Agreement, which is the first legally binding environmental agreement to explicitly integrate human rights with environmental matters. The agreement outlines an approach to enhance the protection of environmental defenders, increase public participation in environmental decision-making, and foster cooperation among countries for biodiversity conservation. However, clear mechanisms to implement the ideals of the Agreement are currently lacking. We identify the key provisions of the Agreement and link these to tangible mechanisms which aim to integrate human rights and nature conservation. These mechanisms include technological (e.g., free online data), human-based (e.g., legal advice from multidisciplinary teams), and nature-based solutions (e.g., transboundary species management). As environmental assets––and threats to them––span national boundaries, the collaborative and participatory provisions of the agreement could catalyze coordinated transboundary environmental management. Because of the importance of this Agreement for the LAC region, we added a Spanish version of this manuscript in the Supplementary Material (versión del artículo en español en el material suplementario).</p

Imagining transformative biodiversity futures

The world has changed. Posited to be a ‘super year’ for biodiversity with various international meetings and the conclusion of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s ten-year Aichi Targets, 2020 will be remembered for very different reasons: catastrophic fires, the COVID-19 pandemic, floods, locust outbreaks, a drastic drop in oil prices and widespread food insecurity. These disruptions will exacerbate the already considerable gap between rich and poor, hitting marginalized groups — the impoverished, women, Indigenous communities and people of colour — much harder. Impacts on the environment have been mixed: carbon emissions may be down, but there are growing concerns that nature will be forgotten in the rush to rebuild devastated economies