Ecosystem services and human wellbeing
Team: Soubadra Devy, T Ganesh, Priyadarsanan DR, Jagdsih Krishnaswamy and Seema Purushothaman (Programme convenor)
Programme goal
To introduce ecosystem services into ongoing and new societal and policy discussions.
The premise is that appreciation of economic values of ecosystem services at local, regional and global scales will lead to better governance and sustainable use of ecosystem services. In practice, however, existing markets do not factor values of ecosystem services in transactions, besides which, our understanding of the complex socio-ecological, and economic and political dimensions of ecosystem services with their implications for equity and environmental justice is poor. So actually applying values of ecosystem services in land use planning and local decision-making has been slow. The Ecosystem services and human wellbeing programme will try to bridge this knowledge gap through an exploration of some key questions.
Research questions
- How are different ecosystem services interlinked with each other and to various components of biodiversity?
- How can we quantify and map bundles of different ecosystem services at large landscape scales?
- What is the influence of differences in temporal and spatial scales of demand and supply of services?
- What are the potential trade-offs and synergies among services and in particular, the lack of knowledge of the relationship between provisioning and regulating services?
- How are ecosystem functions influenced by changes in biodiversity and will respond to global change.
- What are the socio-economic and political impediments to better governance for sustained ecosystem services?
- How can we evolve an equitable framework for governing ecosystem services at local, regional and global scales?
Issues addressed
- Tools that markets, fiscal instruments, and regulatory and institutional mechanisms use to integrate ES flows and poverty reduction, and which tool must be used when.
- How might ecosystem services be sustained if markets are skewed towards one service, undervaluing others; or if there are skews due to poor mediators, rich beneficiaries, essential services versus non-essential. For example,
- provisioning services versus regulatory, or cultural services versus other services
- inequity in ability to pay for some services versus others: so if the poor are in need of improved flows of certain services and rich ready to pay for some other services
- if the economy is inclined towards services generating a capital
- Appropriate methods for markets in which valuation and services frameworks are integrated.
- Management of ecosystems at local scales, with repercussions of short- and long-term variation in eco-system services clear to local communities.
- Grassroot level awareness dissemination and sharing/ reconciling academic and local knowledge.
- Strategizing mainstreaming among different classes of beneficiaries and mediators
Ongoing research
- Hydrological services in Gundal (STF): Measuring watershed services, Assessing farmers’ perceptions on unseen links (forest and farms)
- Pollination services in Coorg (FAO): Visitation and pollination in a gradient of diversity, Socio-economic analysis of biodiversity for coffee pollination
- Conservation pest control: Bio-diverse land use with alternate habitats for natural enemies of insect pests (NATP) – Malnad; Pest control using owls (NG) –KMTR
Pipeline discussions
- To submit proposal for political economy of sustainable ecosystem services in production landscapes for poverty reduction and sustainable growth) with south Asian partners
- Visualising the possibilities of ecosystem services and poverty reduction: in southern India – assessing feasibility, usefulness and equity impact of PES for sustainable farming in diverse socio-ecological landscapes
- Proposal submitted jointly with SRC on trade off between regulatory and provisioning services and global land use
- Conceptual discussions on scale issues
Research and community interfaces
ATREE plans to induct appreciation and valuation of ecosystem services into societal discussions by:
- Facilitating interactions within and across beneficiary groups
- Involving peoples’ representatives for democratic, inclusive planning and governance
- Interactions with bureaucrats and technocrats in line agencies
- Communication through popular print media
- Stewardship through youth and children