OPERAs webinar 2 question by Alister Scott

I was concerned by this idea that by incorporating ecosystem services you can achieve integration. What has surprised me is there hasn’t been any mention of the 12 principles of the ecosystems approach. Having done a tools project for the UK National Ecosystem Approach follow-on, we were very keen to use integration and to develop frameworks using those principles and it seems to me that in a lot of ecosystem work that those principles have either become implicit or conveniently ignored. I was wondering how, if at all, those principles might have impacted into your thinking.

Comments

Marianne Kettunen: Really good question and really good point. Indeed, integration of ecosystem services concept into policies does not automatically mean that the integration – and management actions following the policy integration - will be sustainable. I would say certainly not ignored, so I think it is more of a question of they are implicit in our thinking. The policy world, in a good and bad way, it moves forward and sometimes it moves forward fast enough. The current green economy thinking and ecosystem service thinking doesn’t explicitly enough go back to the 12 principles of the ecosystem approach, even though one would argue that it should. So, I’m hoping that building on that knowledge of the past it is implicitly there, but reminded by your question, what I will actually do is make sure when we finalise our guidance we refer to these guidelines explicitly.

Posted on: 22 Sep 2017 - 17:49