Why should ecosystem services be used for poverty alleviation? Establishing the ethical foundations of ESPA. (Short title: WhyESPA)

该提案概述了提出一个基本问题的研究：为什么生态系统服务应该用于减轻贫困？这是一个基本问题，因为在存在生态和社会权衡的情况下，生态系统服务（ES）不会自动使穷人受益，但已被证明可以积累到更富裕和更强大的行动者（Ronnback等人，2007；Daw等人，2011）。这也是一个及时的问题，不仅因为许多环境干预措施继续发生在以根深蒂固的贫困为特征的环境中，而且还因为预计未来几十年非贫困和空间遥远的参与者对ES的需求将上升（Meyfroidt et al., 2013）。对于我们将与之合作的保护社区来说，这是一个特别及时的问题，因为关于“新保护”和支持保护实践的道德原则的积极辩论（Lalasz等人，2011;Soule, 2013）。虽然现在有越来越多的ESPA研究机构存在，但没有人全面考虑ESPA命题的伦理基础。本提案旨在弥补这一差距，并通过利用当代关于保护的辩论，影响本十年及以后关于环境管理的辩论。它包括三个工作主体，解决了为什么应该将生态系统用于扶贫（PA）的问题：1)通过实证工作，我们试图了解全球北方和南方的保护从业者如何合理化是否以及为什么应该为PA管理生态系统；2)通过新颖的理论工作，我们确定了政治哲学和环境伦理学的理论，这些理论支撑了ES应该为穷人治理的命题；3)在与实践者的智库活动中，我们共同产生了关于为PA管理ES的道德基础的知识。跨国保护部门为这项研究提供了一个适当的焦点，因为保护是一项深刻的伦理事业，其核心涉及共同利益，非人类性质和子孙后代的前景。在关于“新保护”的辩论中，分歧的强度表明了潜在的伦理问题和权衡决策的重要性。从伦理的角度来看，最关键的权衡可以被描述为：a)人类福祉与非人类本性，b)当代人与子孙后代，c)穷人与全人类的更大利益。实证和理论工作都将围绕这些权衡进行。我们关注环保ngo有两个原因。首先，他们形成了国际保护思想的先锋（Adams, 2004），他们的影响是显著的，因为他们的跨国范围。其次，我们之前的工作表明，ES概念在保护部门具有重要意义，特别是允许一些保护组织更新优先考虑穷人作为保护受益者的基本原理（Fisher和Brown，提交）。这些迹象，再加上关于“新保护”的新争论，可能意味着一种混合保护伦理的出现，这种伦理结合了对人类和生态系统的关注，在某种程度上与生态系统的概念有关。因此，在保护领域对这些现象进行实证研究是及时的。我们假设，将注意力转向道德问题可能有助于解决ES权衡，通过确定一个明确的和可辩护的案例，从从业者和理论支持，为什么最贫穷的人应该优先考虑。提出这一观点有可能带来变革，因为现实情况是，在许多情况下，穷人和最贫穷的人无法继续获得社会服务，特别是在治理发生变化的情况下。因此，我们提出的研究有可能在如何概念化贫困和社会服务治理方面提供一个阶段性的变化，反过来，如何解决相关的权衡。

This proposal outlines research asking a fundamental question: why should ecosystem services be used for poverty alleviation? It is a fundamental question because, in the presence of ecological and social trade-offs, ecosystem services (ES) do not automatically benefit poor people, but have been demonstrated to accrue to better-off and more powerful actors (Ronnback et al., 2007; Daw et al., 2011). It is also a timely question, not only because many environmental interventions continue to take place in settings characterised by entrenched poverty but also because demand for ES from non-poor and spatially distant actors is predicted to rise in coming decades (Meyfroidt et al., 2013). It is a particularly timely question for the conservation community, with whom we will work, because of active debates about the 'new conservation' and the ethical principles underpinning conservation practice (Lalasz et al., 2011; Soule, 2013). While a growing body of ESPA research now exists, none has comprehensively considered the ethical foundations of the ESPA proposition. This proposal is designed to address this gap and influence the terms of debate on environmental management in this decade and beyond, by harnessing contemporary debates in conservation. It comprises three bodies of work addressing the question of why ES should be used for poverty alleviation (PA): 1) Through empirical work, we seek to understand how conservation practitioners in the global north and south rationalise whether and why ES should be governed for PA; 2) Through novel theoretical work, we identify theories in political philosophy and environmental ethics underpinning the proposition that ES should be governed for the poor; 3) in a Think Tank event with practitioners, we co-produce knowledge about the ethical underpinnings of governing ES for PA. The transnational conservation sector provides an appropriate focus for this research because conservation is a deeply ethical undertaking, having concerns for the common good, non-human nature and the prospects of future generations at its core. The strength of disagreement in debates about the 'new conservation' signifies the underlying ethical concerns and the importance attributed to decisions over trade-offs. From an ethical perspective, the most critical trade-offs can be characterised as: a) human wellbeing vs. non-human nature, b) current vs. future generations and c) the poor vs. the greater good of all humans. It is around these trade-offs that both the empirical and the theoretical work will be situated.We focus upon conservation NGOs for two reasons. Firstly, they form the vanguard of international thinking about conservation (Adams, 2004), and their influence is significant because of their transnational reach. Secondly, our previous work indicates that ES concepts have important implications in the conservation sector, in particular allowing some conservation organisations to renew rationales for prioritising poorer people as beneficiaries of conservation (Fisher and Brown, submitted). These indications, combined with fresh debates about the 'new conservation', may signify the emergence of a hybrid conservation ethic combining concern for humans and ecosystems, related somehow to the concept of ES. Therefore, it is timely to investigate these phenomena empirically in the conservation sector.We hypothesise that turning attention to ethical concerns might serve to resolve ES tradeoffs, through the identification of an explicit and defensible case, from practitioners and supported by theory, of why the poorest should take priority. Making this case has the potential to be transformational, as the reality is that in many instances, the poor and poorest cannot maintain access to ES, particularly when governance changes. Hence, the research we propose has the potential to provide a step-change in how poverty and the governance of ES are conceptualised, and in turn, how related trade-offs may be resolved.