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Assessing Ecosystem Services in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves

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Assessing Ecosystem Services in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves Assessing Ecosystem Services in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves A Concept Paper prepared for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO By Liette Vasseur and Robert Siron Ottawa, Canada, March 2019 1 To quote this article: VASSEUR, L. & SIRON, R. ‘‘Assessing ecosystem services in UNESCO biosphere reserves’’, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, March 2019. Cover photo: Nuu-chah-nulth photographer Melodie Charlie, Clayoquot Biosphere Trust The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. 2 About the Authors Liette Vasseur Dr. Vasseur is a full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Brock University where she is also a member of the Women and Gender Studies program and the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre. Since 2014, she holds the UNESCO Chair on Community Sustainability: From Local to Global at Brock. Her research program is highly interdisciplinary and links issues such as community-based ecosystem management, climate change adaptation and resilience and sustainable agriculture. She works in China, where she is a visiting scholar at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. Her work in Ecuador focuses on the community sustainability and ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change of rural native communities in the Andean region of the Chimborazo. Some of her previous work has focused on ecosystem management and gender issues in Burkina Faso and support of women in charge of school gardens. She also recently started a project with the Town of Lincoln on climate change adaptation and community sustainability. Her community-research work with the City of Greater Sudbury led her to receive in 2011 the Latornell Pioneers Award from Conservation Ontario. She has produced over hundred publications and more than 250 presentations as a researcher. She was recently appointed President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. She also is the vice-chair for North America Region of the Commission for Ecosystem Management at the International Union for Conservation of Nature and leads the thematic group on Ecosystem Governance. Dr. Vasseur is now the Past-President of the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology and President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Robert Siron Dr. Siron is the coordinator of the Ecosystems & Biodiversity Program and he also co-coordinates the Northern Environment Program in Ouranos, a scientific consortium on regional climatology and adaptation to climate change. He joined the consortium in 2009 to coordinate the Ouranos scientific contribution to the Climate Change Action Plan 2006-2012 of the Quebec government. Previously, he started his career as a postdoctoral and then associate researcher in marine ecotoxicology at the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS-Oceanology) and acted as lecturer at the Université du Québec à Rimouski. Subsequently, he worked as consultant in environmental education and popularizing science. He joined the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, where he contributed to the establishment of the St. Lawrence Observatory at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute, then working with the DFO’s Oceans Directorate in Ottawa, as national coordinator of the Marine Environmental Quality program, and as scientific manager in charge of the implementation of the Ecosystem-based Management in Canada’s oceans. Recently, he acted as expert to evaluate a UNESCO biosphere reserve periodic review, and since 2017, he is a member of the sectoral commission on natural, social and human sciences of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. He is also a member of the Biodiversity Adaptation Working Group of the Natural Resource Canada’s national platform on adaptation to climate change. 3 Contributors This paper was produced by the members of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s working group: Eleanor Haine Bennett (Canadian Commission for UNESCO), Elena Bennett (McGill University), Shailyn Drukis (Youth Advisory Group), Andreas Link (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources & Forestry), Laura Loucks (Clayoquot Biosphere Trust), and Lenore Swystun (Prairie Wild Consulting), under the leadership of Liette Vasseur (Brock University) and Robert Siron (Ouranos). We are grateful for their contributions. We are also grateful for the contributions to the case studies from Laura Loucks, Research Director, Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, and Geneviève Poirier-Ghys, Director of Conservation, Mont Saint-Hilaire Biosphere Reserve. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Bernal Herrera-Fernández from the Foundation for the Development of the Central Volcanic Mountain Range (Fundecor), Costa Rica, Pamela McElwee from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, United States, and Geneviève Poirier, Director of Conservation, Mont Saint-Hilaire Biosphere Reserve, for reviewing this document. Their comments were greatly appreciated. 4 Table of Contents About the Authors .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Contributors ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................ 4 Glossary of Terms ............................................................................................................................................... 6 Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 1. Ecosystem services: assessing / valuing nature’s contributions to people ................................................. 9 2. Ecosystem services … a tool to connect people and nature ..................................................................... 12 3. Biosphere Reserves: sources and stewards of ecosystem services .......................................................... 14 4. A proposed step-by-step approach to define and assess Biosphere Reserves’ ecosystem services ........ 17 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 24 References ....................................................................................................................................................... 25 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................................... 27 Appendix 1. Diaz et al. 2018 Supplemental: ..................................................................................................... 29 Appendix 2. Questions asked in the self-study document ............................................................................... 30 Appendix 3. Check-list for guiding the assessment of Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) and Ecosystem services (ES) within UNESCO Biosphere Reserves during the periodic review process, and NCP/ES examples from the two case studies ................................................................................................................................ 31 5 Glossary of Terms Aichi Biodiversity Targets - The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are part of The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011- 2020 – A ten-year framework for action by all countries and stakeholders to save biodiversity and enhance its benefits for people. Adopted in 2010 at the Conference for the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, the plan includes 20 biodiversity targets, known as the Aichi Targets, which are to be achieved by 2020 to reverse the global decline in biodiversity. Ecosystem - An ecosystem includes all living things in a given area, as well as their interactions with each other, and with their non-living environments (weather, earth, sun, soil, climate, and atmosphere). Each organism has a role to play and contributes to the health and productivity of the ecosystem as a whole. Ecosystem Approach - Ecosystem-based management is an integrated management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation. Equitable Payments for Ecosystem Services - Payments for ecosystem services occur when a beneficiary or user of an ecosystem service makes a direct or indirect payment to the provider of that service. The idea is that whoever preserves or maintains an ecosystem service should be paid for doing so in a way that recognizes and balancing the rights and interests of different stakeholders. Material NCP - Material Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) are substances, objects, or other material elements from nature that directly sustain people's physical existence and material assets. They are typically physically consumed in the process of being experienced—for example, when organisms are transformed into food, energy, or materials for ornamental purposes. Nature-Based Solutions - Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are “actions
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