Co-producing ecosystem services for adapting to climate change

Leveraging co-production within ecosystem restoration to maximize benefits to coastal birds

Coastal Louisiana's ecosystems are threatened by anthropogenic factors exacerbated by climate change induced sea-level rise. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in injuries and deaths to coastal birds in Louisiana, and the ongoing loss of habitat has limited the potential for successful nesting of resident birds throughout the coast. Habitat loss is being addressed through increased large-scale ecosystem restoration as a result of settlement funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. To further inform bird restoration in Louisiana, an avian restoration guidance document (Guidance for Coastal Ecosystem Restoration and Monitoring to Create or Improve Bird-NestingHabitat, 2023) was developed to maximize restoration benefits for coastal breeding birds while also achieving broader habitat restoration objectives. The developed restoration guidance was co-produced by subject-matter experts and professionals, including avian experts, engineers, and coastal restoration project managers. The result of this cross-disciplinary effort was specific and targeted guidance that presents designable habitat features that are in the control of project engineers and are also important high-value bird nesting habitats (e.g., shoreline access, elevation heterogeneity and edge habitat). For the first time in Louisiana, defined nest-site characteristics and monitoring approaches are readily available to inform ecosystem restoration project implementation. The restoration document specifically emphasizes bird species that breed and nest in coastal habitats in Louisiana, and restoration managers can use these guidelines to explicitly incorporate bird nesting habitat features into coastal restoration planning, design, and implementation. In developing this guidance, many knowledge gaps and data needs were identified specific to engineering and project design, enabling the research community to frame research questions around specific coastal restoration questions. The co-production of science model applied here for avian resources is applicable to a wide range of other living marine resources that may benefit from large-scale ecosystem restoration and is an example of the benefits of working relationships, communications, and common goal setting.

Opportunities for Nature-based Solutions to contribute to Climate-Resilient Development Pathways

There is potential for Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to contribute to Climate Resilient Development (CRD) due to their integrated approach to mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. However, despite alignment between NbS and CRD's objectives, realization of this potential is not guaranteed. A CRD Pathways (CRDP) approach helps to analyze the complexities of the relationship between CRD and NbS, and a climate justice lens enables the identification of the multiple ways that NbS can support or undermine CRD by foregrounding the politics inherent in deciding between NbS trade-offs. We use stylized vignettes of potential NbS to examine how the dimensions of climate justice reveal the potential of NbS to contribute to CRDP. We consider tensions in NbS projects between local and global climate objectives, and the potential for NbS framing to reinforce inequalities or unsustainable practices. Ultimately, we present a framework that combines climate justice and CRDP in an analytical tool for understanding the potential for a NbS to support CRD in specific places.

Ecosystem services as systemic enablers for transformation in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: an analytical synthesis

Centre-staging ecosystem services within development paradigms can improve understanding on the flow of benefits from nature to human societies across time, scale and geographies, and trigger well-being-oriented societal and policy responses in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. This region is amongst the world's most biodiverse, has high-value nature-society interactions, supports one-fourth of humanity and faces several developmental challenges. An assessment of the existing evidence establishes that substantial benefits and values can be gained by nurturing the relationship between ecosystems and socio-economic systems. Mainstreaming ecosystem services in the development agenda helps address poverty and intersectionality, preserves culture and heritage, and enables holistic transformation in the region. The Nature Futures Framework of the IPBES is used to develop and apply an analytical framework for the region, in which ecosystem service-oriented action pathways are considered to be relevant and feasible for attaining sustainability. Three pathways, labelled as Prevention, Restoration and Development innovation, incorporate strategies and actions that mainstream ecosystem services and uphold the multiple values placed on nature by society. Illustrations are used to demonstrate the significant potential for policy action in creating positive impacts on both nature and society with the adoption of a Nature Futures framing for the region. The region has the potential to demonstrate the operationalisation of an integrated framework for nurturing nature-people relationships, in the pursuit of transformative change as envisioned under the sustainable development agenda. Ecosystem services can enable such transformative change, acting as triggers for action that mainstream nature into developmental decision-making.

Nature-based climate solutions require a mix of socioeconomic and governance attributes

Nature-based climate solutions (NCS) can play a crucial role in reducing climate change. There is, however, a lack of understanding of the biophysical, social, and political contexts surrounding NCS, which hampers its practical implementation. Here, we used estimates of carbon sink potential to identify socioeconomic and ecological factors that may stimulate NCS implementation in developing economies. We considered carbon sink potential for eight NCS, including reforestation, peatland restoration, natural forest management, improved rice cultivation, optimal grazing intensity, grazing (legumes), avoided peatland impacts, and avoided coastal impacts. Food insecurity hotspots, which currently receive the most development aid, have the lowest likelihood of realizing NCS' potential. Poor governance structures and food insecurity impede the implementation of NCS projects at the country level. By carefully assessing complementary food security, sustainable financing, and soil quality safeguards, NCS as a nationally determined contribution to climate mitigation can be made more effective.

Urban Forests and Green Areas as Nature-Based Solutions for Brownfield Redevelopment: A Case Study from Brescia Municipal Area (Italy)

Urban areas are experiencing major changes and facing significant sustainability challenges. Many cities are undergoing a transition towards a post-industrial phase and need to consider the regeneration of brownfield sites. Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) are increasingly considered as tools for supporting this transition and promoting sustainable development by delivering multiple ecosystem services (ESs). Although the potential of NBSs as a cost-effective enabler of urban sustainability has been recognized, their implementation faces numerous barriers. The effective assessment of benefits delivered by urban NBSs is considered by existing literature as one of them. In order to contribute to filling this knowledge gap, we analyzed two alternative NBS-based intervention scenarios—i.e., (1) an urban forest and (2) meadows with sparse trees—for the redevelopment of an urban brownfield area within the municipality of Brescia (Northern Italy). Nine ESs were assessed both in biophysical and economic terms via a combination of modeling (InVEST, i-Tree and ESTIMAP) and traditional estimation methods. The results show that both scenarios improve ES stock and flow compared to the baseline, ensuring annual flows ranging between 140,000 and 360,000 EUR/year. Scenario 1 shows higher values when single ESs are considered, while scenario 2 shows higher total values, as it also accounts for the phytoremediation capacity that is not considered under the first scenario. All in all, regulating ESs represent the bulk of estimated ESs, thus highlighting the potential of proposed NBSs for improving urban resilience. The ES assessment and valuation exercise presented within this paper is an example of how research and practice can be integrated to inform urban management activities, and provide inputs for future decision making and planning regarding urban developments.

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits-"win-wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

Conceptualizing ecosystem services using social-ecological networks

Social-ecological networks (SENs) represent the complex relationships between ecological and social systems and are a useful tool for analyzing and managing ecosystem services. However, mainstreaming the application of SENs in ecosystem service research has been hindered by a lack of clarity about how to match research questions to ecosystem service conceptualizations in SEN (i.e., as nodes, links, attributes, or emergent properties). Building from different disciplines, we propose a typology to represent ecosystem service in SENs and identify opportunities and challenges of using SENs in ecosystem service research. Our typology provides guidance for this growing field to improve research design and increase the breadth of questions that can be addressed with SEN to understand human-nature interdependencies in a changing world.

Five Steps to Inject Transformative Change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

Accelerating declines in biodiversity and unmet targets in the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity are stimulating widespread calls for transformative change. Such change includes societal transitions toward sustainability, as well as in specific content of the CBD's draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. We summarize research on transformative change and its links to biodiversity conservation, and discuss how it may influence the work of the CBD. We identify five steps to inject transformative change into the design and implementation of a new post-2020 framework: Pay attention to lessons learned from transitions research, plan for climate change, reframe area-based conservation, scale up biodiversity mainstreaming, and increase resources. These actions will transform the very nature of work under the CBD; a convention based on voluntary implementation by countries and facilitated by international administrators and experts must now accommodate a broader range of participants including businesses, Indigenous peoples, and multiple nonstate actors.

Distinguishing anthropogenic and natural contributions to coproduction of national crop yields globally

Crop production is a crucial ecosystem service that requires a combination of natural and anthropogenic contributions to high and stable yields, which is a coproduction process. We analysed this coproduction based on nationally aggregated data for 15 major crops for 67 countries and the European Union with data for four time steps (2000, 2006, 2010, 2014). We found strong increases in fertilizer use, net capital stock and manure use intensity for lower-middle-income countries and stagnation or decrease of these for high-income countries. We used a multiple linear regression model predicting yield to distinguish the effect of anthropogenic contributions (crop-specific fertilizer use intensity, net capital stock intensity, manure use intensity) and natural contributions (crop-specific agricultural suitability, including soil characteristics, topography and climate). We found that in particular fertilizer use intensity, manure use intensity and agricultural suitability explained variation in yields to a considerable degree (R² = 0.62).

Getting the message right on nature-based solutions to climate change

Nature-based solutions (NbS)-solutions to societal challenges that involve working with nature-have recently gained popularity as an integrated approach that can address climate change and biodiversity loss, while supporting sustainable development. Although well-designed NbS can deliver multiple benefits for people and nature, much of the recent limelight has been on tree planting for carbon sequestration. There are serious concerns that this is distracting from the need to rapidly phase out use of fossil fuels and protect existing intact ecosystems. There are also concerns that the expansion of forestry framed as a climate change mitigation solution is coming at the cost of carbon rich and biodiverse native ecosystems and local resource rights. Here, we discuss the promise and pitfalls of the NbS framing and its current political traction, and we present recommendations on how to get the message right. We urge policymakers, practitioners and researchers to consider the synergies and trade-offs associated with NbS and to follow four guiding principles to enable NbS to provide sustainable benefits to society: (1) NbS are not a substitute for the rapid phase out of fossil fuels; (2) NbS involve a wide range of ecosystems on land and in the sea, not just forests; (3) NbS are implemented with the full engagement and consent of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in a way that respects their cultural and ecological rights; and (4) NbS should be explicitly designed to provide measurable benefits for biodiversity. Only by following these guidelines will we design robust and resilient NbS that address the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, sustaining nature and people together, now and into the future.

Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation

Nature-based solutions (NbS) to climate change currently have considerable political traction. However, national intentions to deploy NbS have yet to be fully translated into evidence-based targets and action on the ground. To enable NbS policy and practice to be better informed by science, we produced the first global systematic map of evidence on the effectiveness of nature-based interventions for addressing the impacts of climate change and hydrometeorological hazards on people. Most of the interventions in natural or semi-natural ecosystems were reported to have ameliorated adverse climate impacts. Conversely, interventions involving created ecosystems (e.g., afforestation) were associated with trade-offs; such studies primarily reported reduced soil erosion or increased vegetation cover but lower water availability, although this evidence was geographically restricted. Overall, studies reported more synergies than trade-offs between reduced climate impacts and broader ecological, social, and climate change mitigation outcomes. In addition, nature-based interventions were most often shown to be as effective or more so than alternative interventions for addressing climate impacts. However, there were substantial gaps in the evidence base. Notably, there were few studies of the cost-effectiveness of interventions compared to alternatives and few integrated assessments considering broader social and ecological outcomes. There was also a bias in evidence toward the Global North, despite communities in the Global South being generally more vulnerable to climate impacts. To build resilience to climate change worldwide, it is imperative that we protect and harness the benefits that nature can provide, which can only be done effectively if informed by a strengthened evidence base.

From Multidisciplinarity to Transdisciplinarity and from Local to Global Foci: Integrative Approaches to Systemic Resilience Based upon the Value of Life in the Context of Environmental and Gender Vulnerabilities with a Special Focus upon the Brazilian Amazon Biome

Economic and environmental interventions in the Anthropocene have created disruptions that are threatening the capacity of socio-ecological systems to recover from adversities and to be able to maintain key functions for preserving resilience. The authors of this paper underscore the benefits of a workshop-based methodology for developing a vision and an approach to the inner processes of creation that can be used to increase resilience, to cope with societal vulnerabilities and to develop the tools for future planning at local, regional and global scales. Diverse areas of discourse ranging from climate science and sustainability, to psychoanalysis, linguistics and eco-philosophy, contributed meaningfully to the transdisciplinary approach for enhancing resilience. A framework is proposed that can be used throughout society, that integrates the importance of human subjectivity and the variability of human contexts, especially gender, in shaping human experiences and responses to climate change impacts and challenges such as the covid-19 pandemic. Within the domain of socio-economic research, the authors challenge researchers and policy makers to expand future perspectives of resilience through the proposed systemic resilience vision. Movement towards transformative thinking and actions requires inner exploration and visualization of desirable futures for integrating ecological, social, cultural, ethical, and economic dimensions as agencies for catalyzing the transition to livable, sustainable, equitable, ethical, and resilient societies.

Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions

The rapid anthropogenic climate change that is being experienced in the early twenty-first century is intimately entwined with the health and functioning of the biosphere. Climate change is impacting ecosystems through changes in mean conditions and in climate variability, coupled with other associated changes such as increased ocean acidification and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. It also interacts with other pressures on ecosystems, including degradation, defaunation and fragmentation. There is a need to understand the ecological dynamics of these climate impacts, to identify hotspots of vulnerability and resilience and to identify management interventions that may assist biosphere resilience to climate change. At the same time, ecosystems can also assist in the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change. The mechanisms, potential and limits of such nature-based solutions to climate change need to be explored and quantified. This paper introduces a thematic issue dedicated to the interaction between climate change and the biosphere. It explores novel perspectives on how ecosystems respond to climate change, how ecosystem resilience can be enhanced and how ecosystems can assist in addressing the challenge of a changing climate. It draws on a Royal Society-National Academy of Sciences Forum held in Washington DC in November 2018, where these themes and issues were discussed. We conclude by identifying some priorities for academic research and practical implementation, in order to maximize the potential for maintaining a diverse, resilient and well-functioning biosphere under the challenging conditions of the twenty-first century. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.