Negotiating Tradeoffs: Making Informed Choices about Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation

生态系统服务框架为开发同时提供生态稳定和生计安全的方法提供了相当大的潜力，特别是在世界上最脆弱的区域，因为它承诺将对生态系统复原力的关切与其更广泛的发展影响结合起来。然而，越来越多的证据表明，生态系统管理的现实涉及在不同类型的生态系统服务之间做出艰难的选择(例如在气候调节、生物多样性保护、提供水或森林产品等之间)，以及在社会中不同群体的相互竞争的主张之间(例如在当地资源使用者和全球社区内那些担心气候变化或关键有魅力的物种丧失的人之间)。虽然有些地区的生境或景观具有多种价值(例如，丘陵森林，提供生物多样性、碳、水、森林产品和旅游收入)，但这些不同的服务不一定相互独立。需求模式、价格、市场的体制结构和不断变化的科学知识可能会使一些服务比其他服务更有价值，从而导致不同服务之间的权衡(例如，在物种多样性和山区森林碳之间的选择)。这些权衡随着时间的推移(在当前和未来的使用之间)和在不同的空间尺度上(地方、区域、国家和全球)表现出来。大多数权衡分析忽略了生态系统管理战略背景下的实际决策现实。在实地一级，决策通常涉及反复的协商、谈判和妥协过程。相互冲突的利益相关者如何在特定的经验情况下做出选择？不同演员的相对角色是什么，他们在这个过程中如何行使权力？谁的价值观和利益反映在最终结果中，以及结果可以在多大程度上改善社会福祉？加强有效决策的治理机构和结构是什么？这些都是棘手的问题，但如果要将改善的生态系统管理用作可持续减贫的工具，这些问题就至关重要。只有通过对决策过程本身及其混乱的政治现实进行实证记录，我们才能真正理解保护或增强生态系统服务的可行方式，同时造福于社会中最边缘化和最脆弱的群体。该项目将开发一个框架，以了解行为者如何在生态系统管理的背景下实际就权衡进行谈判。这一框架将以印度(喜马拉雅山脉和西高止山脉)森林-水文-城市景观中的两个具体案例研究的详细经验为基础。它将使用专家主导的生态和社会经济动态建模过程，同时与当地利益攸关方更多的“外行”或日常观点接触。它将使用系统动态建模的结构化软件来开发当地社会生态系统的专家和参与性模型，并将通过一系列现场讲习班，利用这些模型使当地利益攸关方参与关于权衡和选择的有组织的对话。这些模拟活动和利益攸关方讲习班的调查结果将用于分析在这些地方实际作出决定的方式，特别侧重于政治制约如何影响这一进程的性质。这些观察将被用来构建一个扎根的框架，记录资源使用谈判的政治经济学，这最终将有助于政策制定者制定更好的扶贫生态系统管理战略。

The ecosystem services framework offers considerable potential for developing approaches that simultaneously provide ecological stability and livelihood security, especially in the most vulnerable regions of the world, as it promises to integrate concerns about the resilience of ecosystems with their broader developmental implications. However, there is increasing evidence that the reality of ecosystem management involves making difficult choices between different types of ecosystem services (such as between climate regulation, biodiversity conservation, provision of water or forest products, and so on), and between the competing claims of different groups in society (such as between local resource users and those within the global community concerned about climate change or loss of key charismatic species). While some areas of habitat or landscape hold multiple values (e.g. hill forests, providing biodiversity, carbon, water, forest products and tourism revenues), these diverse services are not necessarily mutually independent. Patterns of demand, prices, institutional structuring of markets and changing scientific knowledge are likely to make some services more valuable than others, leading to tradeoffs between different services (e.g. the choice between species diversity and carbon in a mountain forest). These tradeoffs manifest themselves both over time (between current and future uses) and at different spatial scales (local, regional, national and global). Most trade-off analyses neglect the reality of actual decision-making in the context of ecosystem management strategies. At the field level, decisions typically involve repeated processes of consultation, negotiation and compromise. How do conflicting stakeholders make choices in specific empirical situations? What are the relative roles of different actors, and how do they exercise power in this process? Whose values and interests are reflected in final outcomes, and to what extent can outcomes be seen to enhance social well-being? What are the institutions and structures of governance that enhance effective decision-making? These are difficult questions, but are critically important if improved ecosystem management is to be used as a tool for sustainable poverty reduction. Only by empirically documenting the decision process itself, in all its messy political reality, will we be able to generate a genuine understanding of the feasible ways in which ecosystem services can be protected or enhanced, while simultaneously benefiting the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in society. This project will develop a framework to understand how actors actually negotiate over tradeoffs in the context of ecosystem management. This framework will be based around a detailed empirical engagement with two specific case studies, located in forest-hydrological-urban landscapes in India (in the Himalayas and the Western Ghats). It will use a process of expert-led modelling of ecological and socio-economic dynamics alongside an engagement with more 'lay' or everyday perspectives from local stakeholders. It will use structured software for systems dynamic modelling to develop expert and participatory models of the local socio-ecological system, and will use these to engage local stakeholders in a structured dialogue about tradeoffs and choices, through a series of site-based workshops. The findings from these modelling exercises, and from the stakeholder workshops, will be used to analyse the ways in which decisions are actually made in these local contexts, with a specific focus on how political constraints influence the nature of the process. These observations will be used to construct a grounded framework that documents the political economy of negotiations over resource use, which will ultimately help policy makers develop better strategies for pro-poor ecosystem management.