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

生态系统服务框架为制定同时提供生态稳定和生计保障的方法提供了巨大潜力，特别是在世界上最脆弱的地区，因为它有望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困难的选择（如气候调节、生物多样性保护、水或森林产品的供应等），以及社会上不同群体之间相互竞争的要求（例如在当地资源使用者和全球社会中关注气候变化或失去关键魅力物种的人之间）。虽然某些生境或景观地区具有多重价值（例如山地森林，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使某些服务比其他服务更有价值，导致不同服务之间的权衡（例如，在山林物种多样性和碳之间作出选择）。这些权衡在时间上（当前和未来的使用之间）和不同的空间尺度（地方、区域、国家和全球）都有体现。大多数权衡分析忽视了生态系统管理战略中实际决策的现实。在外地一级，决策通常涉及反复的协商、谈判和妥协过程。在具体的经验情境中，冲突的利益相关者如何做出选择？不同行为者的相对作用是什么，他们如何在这一进程中行使权力？谁的价值观和利益反映在最后成果中，以及在何种程度上可以看到成果可以增进社会福祉？有哪些机构和治理结构可以加强有效决策？这些都是困难的问题，但如果要把改善生态系统管理作为可持续减贫的工具，这些问题就至关重要。只有通过经验性地记录决策过程本身，在其混乱的政治现实中，我们才能够真正理解保护或增强生态系统服务的可行方法，同时使社会中最边缘化和最脆弱的群体受益。该项目将制定一个框架，以了解行为者如何在生态系统管理的背景下实际谈判权衡。这一框架将以印度（喜马拉雅山和西高止山脉）森林-水文-城市景观的两个具体案例研究的详细经验为基础。它将使用一个由专家主导的生态和社会经济动态建模过程，同时与当地利益相关者的更多“外行”或日常观点进行接触。它将使用结构化软件进行系统动态建模，以开发当地社会生态系统的专家和参与性模型，并将利用这些模型，通过一系列实地讲习班，使当地利益攸关方参与关于权衡和选择的结构化对话。这些模拟活动和利益攸关方讲习班的结果将用于分析在这些地方背景下实际作出决定的方式，特别侧重于政治制约因素如何影响这一进程的性质。这些观察结果将用于构建一个有基础的框架，记录资源使用谈判的政治经济学，这将最终帮助决策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.