Ecosystem Services - Ecological Systems - page 87

applied to gain better understanding of the social and cultural importance of
ecosystem services (e.g., [ 38 ]).
Lastly, experiments in payments for ecosystem services [ 47 , 48 , 69 ], in ecosys-
tem-based management [ 2 ], and in regional planning have begun, giving us
opportunities to learn about how science can play a role in altering institutions,
and how institutions alter decisions and the resulting flow of ecosystem services.
The following section describes some of these efforts in more detail.
Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Decisions
Today, the urgent challenge is to move from theory to practical implementation of ES
tools and approaches in resource decisions taken by individuals, communities,
corporations, and governments. The framework in Fig. 6.3 connects the science of
quantifying services with valuation and policy to devise payment schemes and
management actions that take account of ecosystem services. This connection is
expressed in the real world in a variety of ways across scales from local to global.
A great number and diversity of efforts to implement the ES framework have
emerged worldwide over the past decade. Individually, most of these efforts are
small and idiosyncratic. But collectively, they represent a powerful shift in the
focus of conservation organizations and governments (primarily) toward a more
inclusive, integrated, and effective set of strategies [ 15 ]. Taken together, these
efforts span the globe and target a full suite of ecosystem services, including
principally forest-generated services of carbon sequestration, water supply, flood
control, biodiversity conservation, and enhancement of scenic beauty (and
associated recreation/tourism values) [ 26 , 62 ].
Many local or regional ES efforts focus on a single service that stands out as
sufficiently important, from economic and political perspectives, to overcome the
activation energy required to protect it. Under the institutional umbrella created for
the focal service, it is possible that other services may be at least partially protected.
Beginning in the late 1990s, larger-scale investment in natural capital for water flow
regulation in China - and for a broad suite of ES in Costa Rica - set pioneering
examples that are now being adapted elsewhere and scaled up.
Next, we briefly describe some contrasting models of success, at different scales
and in different kinds of social-ecological systems. In each case, there is an acute or
looming crisis, innovative leadership, and pursuit of dual goals: improving both
human and ES condition.
Local Scale: Water Funds
New York City made one of the first and most famous investments in ecosystem
service provision in recent history, in the mid-1990s. The city invested ca. USD1.5
billion in a variety of watershed protection activities to improve drinking water