Using Ecosystem Services in Community-Based Landscape Planning: Science is Not Ready to Deliver - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 75

5.1 Introduction: Placing Ecosystem Services
in the Context of Sustainable Change of Landscapes
Since time immemorial, humans have been changing landscapes. Recent trends in
using land to increase economic benefits have raised concern about the reper-
cussions on valuable landscape services to do with the quality of human life and
nature. There is a growing public demand for high-quality landscapes, especially
in urbanizing areas and in regions with industrial farming (e.g. Jackson 2008 ;
Kaplan 2007 ; Stephenson 2008 ; Tzoulas et al. 2007 ). In the Netherlands, for
example, where the distinctions between urban and rural life are rapidly disap-
pearing, citizens and businesses are challenging farmers by demanding that the
landscape fulfil functions other than food production. If landscape development
moves away from aiming to improve economic value towards gaining economic,
social, and ecological values (Wu and Hobbs 2007 ), the adapting of landscapes
enters the domain of sustainable development (Antrop 2006 ).
However, the uptake of the concept of sustainable development in landscape
change planning has been problematic. For example, the concept of ecosystem
services has failed to inspire spatial planning science (Termorshuizen and Opdam
2009 ). The reasons for this have not been studied extensively, but some causes
have been proposed. Firstly, planning for sustainability requires knowledge to be
integrated from scientific disciplines ranging from environmental to social sci-
ences. A recent review on sustainability assessment methodologies (Singh et al.
2009 ) revealed that only a few methods take into account the environmental,
economic, and social aspects. Secondly, the wide variety of interpretations of the
sustainability notion in scientific disciplines, interest groups, and cultures (Antrop
2006 ; Singh et al. 2009 ) confuses decision makers and causes them to question the
concept's credibility. Also, it allows actors to bend the implications of the concept
according to their underlying interests, values, and convictions (after Borch 2007 ).
Thirdly, the application of sustainability to on-the-ground landscape change is
accompanied by a plethora of uncertainties: for example, with respect to future
land use demands, climate change implications, and the impacts of land use
change on landscape functions.
These characteristics are typical of an unstructured (wicked) problem (Hiss-
chemöller and Hoppe 2001 ) which causes conflict and controversy and also
interdependence—the latter because achieving one's objectives is conditional on
others achieving theirs. Jiggins et al. ( 2007 ) and Van Bommel et al. ( 2009 ) showed
how difficult it can be for stakeholders in a resource dilemma to accept such
interdependence and its consequences. Unstructured problems are further marked
by the multiple perspectives of stakeholder groups. Therefore, defining common
visions on the need to adapt landscapes and finding the best solution to achieve
them is a complex, usually unpredictable process, in which many factors (bio-
physical, social, economic, and political) interact. In such conditions, were
uncertainty, contest and negotiation prevail over facts, landscape change planning
adopts characteristics of adaptive governancewith a strong learning component