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Cultural ecology (expressed as landscapes) combines a sense of place (defined by historical rights and habits) with a territory (a geographical entity) to express connections between a rural economy (based on local production and marketing) and its dependent urban economy (dependent on distant production processes), with ecosystem services (the processes by which the environment produces resources utliised by humans such as clean air, water, food and materials) supporting growth (as wealth and population size), which accentuates social inequalities (the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society) and environmental degradation (the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife) eg deforestation (the process whereby natural forests are cleared through logging and/or burning, either to use the timber or to replace the area for alternative uses.) and climate related issues (many detrimental effects such as more frequent and severe natural disasters, droughts and floods, a rising sea level, and a reduction in biodiversity that particularly affects species upon which the world's poor rely for their livelihoods reduce the ability of the environment to provide food, water and shelter for the people who currently live there. As a result, many people will be forced to relocate.) that require behaviour change to re-balance people with resources (the challenge is to find the right balance between what we demand, what the environment needs, and what other people need from us in terms of food imports and exports) through resilience plans (the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks) to conserve ecosystem services.
http://archive.defra.gov.uk/environment/economy/documents/sustainable-life-framework.pdf
Managing ecosystem services concept map
Managing ecosystem services concept map
Opportunities to contemplate ‘nature’.
These are the contemplative services offering the non-material cultural benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experience, including, e.g., knowledge systems, social relations, and aesthetic values
Many people value species and ecosystems intrinsically (e.g., for their complexity, diversity, spiritual significance, wildness, beauty, or wondrousness). As a result, species and ecosystems have subjective intrinsic value. How much subjective intrinsic value they have, in general or with respect to particular systems and species, depends upon the prevalence, strength, and stability of the valuing. Many people value some species and ecosystems (e.g., charismatic megafauna and old growth forests) more than others (e.g., infections microorganisms and deserts). As a result, they possess more subjective intrinsic value.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/intrinsic-value-ecology-and-conservation-25815400
A safe supportive environment
These are the regulating services providing the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, including, for example, the regulation of climate, water, and some human diseases.
Basic day-to-day living
These are provisioning services supplying the products obtained from ecosystems, including, for example, genetic resources, food and fiber, and fresh water.
The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has gained global attention in recent years as a framework for promoting the societal benefits of ecosystem conservation. This has been strongly influenced by widely read scientific publications and international initiatives, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, and by increasing operational level action plans as ES-related policy instruments. Governments are increasingly integrating goals targeted at the protection of ES into their policy directives. For example, the governments of China, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Ecuador all have schemes to pay landholders who engage in management (e.g., protection of forest or improved agricultural practices) that secures the supply of hydrological services (e.g., clean water provision; Global nongovernment organizations such as the US Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund have projects around the world for investments in market-based instruments that aim to protect ES and biodiversity. The increasing attention paid to ES can be attributed largely to the concept’s potential to promote a broader appreciation of the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being.
Practical applications of the ES concept are now becoming widespread and include payments-for-ES (PES) schemes, spatial planning, greening of national accounting and directing strategic arguments in high-level policy and lawmaking
The rapid growth in practical applications of the ES concept has illuminated ethical considerations related to its use. For example, concerns have been raised that an emphasis on financial valuations of nature may undermine other forms of valuation based on, for example, moral or cultural values.
As the ES concept becomes increasingly integrated into environmental science and policy, the time is ripe for a comprehensive and reflective consideration of the range of ethical questions associated with the concept’s application. Some critiques of ES have been focused only on a subset of the diverse, multifaceted applications of the concept. For example, there has been particularly strong criticism of valuing nature in monetary terms.
However, many practical applications of the ES concept do not require such monetary valuations (e.g., education; landuse planning; strategic policymaking; and, in some cases, even PES schemes). It is important to identify which ethical issues are relevant to particular ES applications so that the most pertinent issues may be addressed in a given management context.
A comprehensive consideration of the range of ethical issues associated with different ES applications is also timely because many applications are relatively new and so some ethical facets are only just becoming apparent. Moreover, the debate on the ethics of ES that has been most accessible to ES researchers and practitioners has been focused mostly on the theoretical underpinnings of the approach, which has left the diverse range of practical applications unaddressed.
Here, we focus attention on the most common on-ground applications of the ES concept and identify the main ethical issues associated with each application. We begin with a brief description of the range of practical applications. This is followed by a categorization of the major kinds of ethical issues and their relevance to applications of the concept.
We then identify ways for addressing these issues to improve on-ground application of the ES concept. We finish with advice on how to integrate consideration of the ethics of ES into a broader ecosystem management framework. Throughout the present article, we note where a misunderstanding of the major principles of the concept may lead to ethical concerns and where modifying the application of the concept is necessary to address these concerns.
Contrasting the core metaphor of nature as a service provider with alternative metaphors describing the value of nature becomes more crucial as the ES concept gains prominence. Over reliance on economic metaphors in discussions about the value of nature may erode noneconomic motivations for conservation and may lead policymakers to falsely conclude that there are possible equivalents (or substitutes) between economic and ecological values. An exclusive focus on monetary valuations raises particular ethical issues, but different applications of the ES concept raise different types of ethical issues, and these issues can be addressed using a range of management approaches.
Analysis of factors controlling ecological resilience is the best way to identify the most desirable management actions. The concept of resilience is based on the notion that ecosystems are able to adapt to shocks, stressors, and threats. However ecosystem resilience is itself a depletable feature. This emphasizes the need to evaluate the ability of ecosystems to rebound from short and long term disturbances resulting from human impacts. With respect to climate change, although some species may be able to adapt to elevated temperatures by moving to locations with lower temperatures, this will occur only if suitable habitats and migration routes exist within those temperature ranges. Resilience plans control factors to allow the critical forage, reproduction, and migratory resources.
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss3/art22/#ecosystem
Community and the politics of place
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aDMyfMqgdHEC&q=pre-amble#v=snippet&q=pre-amble&f=false
Conservation management
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