Suchergebnisse

Nature-based solutions are receiving increasing attention in the water management sector. There is a growing interest and awareness of the value of managing, conserving and restoring ecosystems for their role in regulating water and protecting watersheds. In the Peruvian mountains, some adaptation projects and programs emphasize nature-based solutions but face multiple challenges, for example the lack of knowledge on the effectiveness of such solutions and the diverging opinions on their relevance among decision-makers. In those projects, stakeholders have diverse interests in the implementation of nature-based solutions, in part because of their different interactions with ecosystem services. Using mixed methods, this study analyses options for adaptation and water management in the Andes in Peru. We propose a critical analysis of decision contexts on adaptation and water management and the implications of adaptation options on ecosystem services and equity. We identify different doctrines and preferences for technological or ecosystem-based options and relate them to stakeholder worldviews. The contrasting discourses on whether adaptation should be based on ecosystems or infrastructure can be associated with different conceptions of equity and different opinions on the role of government, communities and the private sector in water management. We also explore whether some options are favoured by decision rules and power relations. Analysing the interactions between stakeholders and ecosystem services and understanding the trade-offs between ecosystem services can help explain the different positions in favour or against nature-based solutions. This research highlights the importance of power relationships in adaptation decision-making, as such relationships favour the values and knowledge of some stakeholders and give priority of their preferred adaptation options.

Ecological Applications 21. 5 (2011): 3083-3103 copyright by the Ecological Society of America ; We carried out an integrated analysis of ecosystem services in the Doñana social-ecological system (southwestern Spain), from the providers (different aquatic plant functional groups) to the beneficiaries (different stakeholders living in or visiting the area). We explored the ecosystem services supplied by aquatic plants by linking these services to different plant functional traits, identifying relevant ecosystem services and then working our way backward to ecosystem properties and the functional traits underpinning them. We started from 15 ecosystem services associated with aquatic systems (freshwater marshes, salt marshes, ponds on aeolian sheets, temporal coastal ponds, and estuaries) and related them to plant traits (directly or indirectly through intermediate ecosystem properties). We gathered information from the literature on the functional traits of 144 plants occurring in the aquatic ecosystems of Doñana. We analyzed the species×trait matrix with multivariate classification and ordination techniques and obtained seven functional groups with different potentials for delivering ecosystem services. A survey was then administered to 477 stakeholders to analyze, through the use of a contingent valuation exercise, how the ecosystem services provided by the different functional groups were valued. We identified connections between individual plant traits, ecosystem processes, and ecosystem services, but a mismatch appeared between the functional groups and the economic values placed on them by the beneficiaries. We found that contingent valuation applied to ecosystem services tended to ignore the ecosystem properties and biodiversity underpinning them. Our results cast doubts over the suitability of the economic valuation framework of ecosystem services to capture the full value of biodiversity and ecosystems to people ; This research was partially supported by a grant from the Madrid Regional Government of Education, which was co-funded by the Social European Fund (F.S.E.), the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Project CGL2006- 14121/BOS), and the Spanish Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs through project 018/2009. S. Díaz acknowledges support from FONCyT and CONICET (Argentina) and IAI (CRN 2015, supported by US NSF GEO- 0452325)