Ilse Gejzendorffer: In our recent study on Aichi targets and Sustainable Development Goals, we do not claim that the exact terminology has to be used for the concept of ecosystem services to be useful for monitoring and reporting purposes for policies. I think that instead of repeatedly redefining the concept ever more precisely, the acknowledgement of the complex interactions and feedbacks between social and ecological components and attempts to better represent these interactions in policies and management plans would have a greater impact.
Marianne Kettunen: As someone who works in the science-policy interphase for the past 10 years, I think that mainstreaming the concept of ecosystem services has helped to articulate the breath of material and non-material benefits of nature to wellbeing (e.g. the interconnected of these benefits) conceptually across sectoral policies in a manner that no previous / other concept linking nature to sustainability has. The integration is far from perfect, but it is still more concrete than before with linked to policies like risk reduction, health, social cohesion etc. being established. But I agree with Ilse that as long as we stick with some core consistency in the definition and classification, the best value that ecosystem concept brings is its acknowledgement of the interconnectedness between a) different ecosystem services and b) ecosystem services and their social implications – and that is what we should aim at operationalising.
Comments
#1
Ilse Gejzendorffer: In our recent study on Aichi targets and Sustainable Development Goals, we do not claim that the exact terminology has to be used for the concept of ecosystem services to be useful for monitoring and reporting purposes for policies. I think that instead of repeatedly redefining the concept ever more precisely, the acknowledgement of the complex interactions and feedbacks between social and ecological components and attempts to better represent these interactions in policies and management plans would have a greater impact.
#2
Marianne Kettunen: As someone who works in the science-policy interphase for the past 10 years, I think that mainstreaming the concept of ecosystem services has helped to articulate the breath of material and non-material benefits of nature to wellbeing (e.g. the interconnected of these benefits) conceptually across sectoral policies in a manner that no previous / other concept linking nature to sustainability has. The integration is far from perfect, but it is still more concrete than before with linked to policies like risk reduction, health, social cohesion etc. being established. But I agree with Ilse that as long as we stick with some core consistency in the definition and classification, the best value that ecosystem concept brings is its acknowledgement of the interconnectedness between a) different ecosystem services and b) ecosystem services and their social implications – and that is what we should aim at operationalising.