Better planning with ecosystem services?

Abstract

The contribution of ecosystems to human well-being is central to any sustainable development and landscape management policy, which should include economic, social and ecological components. Sectorial regulations (concerning e.g. forestry, farming, water, urban development, biodiversity, etc.) often drive land use decisions, but they offer limited scope for developing integrated land use plans and policies. Instead, the disperse decisions across a broad range of stakeholders which often find it difficult to develop coordinated approaches, let-alone integrate the necessary ecological processes and functions than support land use options. The ecosystem services concept offers one avenue for integrating various sectorial concerns into a common framework, but hasn't been widely applied yet in France. In this paper, we explore how ecosystem services were used to update the protected area policy of a local government in France, and their potential in urban planning and environmental impact assessments in the same area. Our analysis shows that ecosystem services do offer a way to renew the way environmental concerns can be framed into concrete land use decisions if they are consistent with the legal background of decision-making procedures, and transformed into operational solutions for use by decision-makers. Although scientific and technical developments remain essential, this also requires innovation at the science-policy interface.