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The tourism sector is regarded as a modern-day engine of growth and has significant potential to serve as a vehicle for socio-economic upliftment. Evidence also illustrates the potential that pro-poor tourism has for incentivising natural capital protection and ecosystem restoration. This paper explores the impact of the decline in global tourism, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, on incentivising environmental management. This is analysed in conjunction with emerging literature on the impact of environmental degradation on exacerbating risks of zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19. A causal loop diagram was developed to map the system and reflect its structure and functioning and capture interactions. The behaviour of the system was used to explore the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on SMME development. This informed the re-examination of the key constraints identified as currently limiting development and growth of pro-poor tourism SMMEs. The results re-emphasise the tourism sector’s vested interest in investing in the protection of natural capital and restoration of degraded ecosystems. It highlights the need for the sector to act collectively to support recovery from Covid-19, and build resilience by developing a strategic vision for tourism that is more sustainable and equitable, and balances the needs of people and the environment.

The progressive loss of biodiversity, caused by human actions, will have devastating consequences unless measures are urgently taken. The conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity needs to a...

There is growing concern that ongoing degradation of natural capital, due to various global and local drivers of change, will compromise the delivery of the ecosystem services on which the tourism industry relies. This chapter aims to explore the relationships between natural capital and tourism. The chapter first provides an introduction to the inter-dependencies between business and natural capital and presents an overview of the tourism sector in South Africa. The focus then shifts to conceptualizing the links between tourism and natural capital, focusing on inland freshwater systems. A conceptual framework of the interactions between natural capital and the tourism sector is presented and key links between hydrologic ecosystem services and the tourism sector are described. In the final section, the risks of increasingly stressed water resources on tourism and the South African economy are explored.

Ecosystem services (ES) practitioners (e.g., researchers, policy makers) have been working to better define, measure, and value the ways that nature contributes to society. Because measurement techniques follow the labeling or identification of ES, precise identification is critical. This article reviews literature and consults experts in classification science and ES to determine the expected benefits of using ES classification knowledge (classification knowledge); ecosystem services classification systems (ES-CS) and their principles. An informal analysis of the costs of transitioning from the current ad-hoc approach—based on various ES lists—to using classification knowledge was conducted. 18 benefits of using classification knowledge were found, including allowing ES to be defined more easily and precisely, easing the transfer of knowledge among studies, and avoiding the need to recreate ES identification systems. Collectively, these 18 benefits should allow for more accurate and consistent definition of ES, thereby serving to improve communication and measurement of ES. Moreover, the expected benefits of using ES-CS outweigh expected costs of the transition. Practitioners can use ES-CS in whole, or in parts, as their research or their institutions warrant. Finally, a case study was conducted that shows how ES measures can be organized using ES-CS, delivering benefits to practitioners.

Both internal and external stakeholders of organisations are increasingly aware of the importance of natural capital in creating sustainable value. Corporate reporting on natural capital has been growing considerably over the past couple of decades, particularly for issues such as climate change, water and waste. Yet, quantified data disclosed is currently essentially limited to annual flows, such as resource use or emissions, failing to account for net impact on natural capital. This paper proposes new conventions to double-entry bookkeeping to facilitate net biodiversity impact accounting and disclosure. Case study applications involve assessing the net ecosystem impacts of both the Nimes-Manduel-Redessan train station and Cossure offset projects, in the South of France, to record the periodic and accumulated changes in ecosystem extent and condition, without compromising the incommensurability of biodiversity components. Assuming the two projects belong to the same business, the scaling up of project-level data and their aggregation at the company level are demonstrated through the development of Statements of Biodiversity Performance and Position.

Ecosystem services approaches are material to business performance. However, the lack of sufficiently detailed and commonly used ecosystem services classification systems prevents companies from benefitting fully from them. The final ecosystem services perspective, embodied by the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Classification System (FEGS-CS) and the National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS), offers a way through key bottlenecks to mainstreaming ecosystem services in corporate decision-making and accounting. Compared to other systems, these are easier to use, improve materiality analysis, and aid stakeholder engagement. In addition, their potential to improve the accuracy of valuation makes them preferable for natural capital accounting. Companies that adopt this final ecosystem services (FES) perspective are likely to gain these immediate benefits and first-mover advantage, as this FES perspective is poised to become standard practice.

Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and oftenconflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for theinclusive valuation of nature's contributions to people (NCP) indecision making, as well as broad methodological steps fordoing so. While developed within the context of theIntergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable toinitiatives at the knowledge?policy interface, which require apluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. Weargue that transformative practices aiming at sustainablefutures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stake holder groups that hold different values on human nature relations and NCP Fil: Pascual, Unai. University Of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Pataki, György. Corvinus University of Budapest; Hungría Fil: Roth, Eva. University of Southern Denmark; Dinamarca Fil: Stenseke, Marie. University Goteborg; Suecia Fil: Watson, Robert T.. University of East Anglia; Reino Unido Fil: Basak Dessane, Esra. Project House; Turquía Fil: Islar, Mine. Lund University; Suecia Fil: Kelemen, Eszter. Environmental Social Science Research Group; Hungría Fil: Maris, Virginie. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive; Francia Fil: Quaas, Martin. Kiel University; Alemania Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha M. United Nations University; Japón Fil: Wittmer, Heidi. Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania Fil: Adlan, Asia. University of Khartoum; Sudán Fil: Ahn, SoEun. Korea Environment Institute; Corea del Sur Fil: Al-Hafedh, Yousef S. King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology; Arabia Saudita Fil: Amankwah, Edward. Center for Environmental Governance; Ghana Fil: Berry, Pam. University of Washington; Estados Unidos Fil: Bilgin, Adem. University of Oxford; Reino Unido Fil: Breslow, Sara J. Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs of Turkey; Turquía Fil: Bullock, Craig. University College Dublin; Reino Unido Fil: Caceres, Daniel Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina Fil: Daly-Hassen, Hamed. University of Carthage; Túnez Fil: Figueroa, Eugenio. Universidad de Chile; Chile Fil: van den Belt, Marjan. Victoria University of Wellington; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Verma, Madhu. Indian Institute of Forest Management; India Fil: Wickson, Fern. GenØk Centre for Biosafety, Siva innovasjonssenter; Noruega Fil: Yagi, Noboyuki. The University of Tokyo; Japón

Firms have traditionally viewed biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) as external constraints on their activities because of regulations and laws imposed on them. Companies have started accounting for ES to improve management practices and even restore natural capital. Accounting for ES may be undertaken for different purposes, depending on whose needs and aspirations it aims to satisfy. Accounting for ES in a standardised, comparable and transparent manner has become a critical challenge for mainstreaming ES in business decision-making and applications. A lack of standardisation means that ES cannot be consistently accounted for from the perspective of a whole business, a business unit, its supply chains or its products and projects. This prevents ES accounting from being 'mainstreamed'. Ecosystem services-based approaches are a way of understanding the complex relationships between nature and humans in order to support decision-making, with the aim of reversing the declining status of ecosystems and ensuring the sustainable use/ management/conservation of resources.

International audience; Business activities play a major role in biodiversity loss so that firms are under increasing pressures from stakeholders to mitigate their negative impacts on ecosystems. As business attitudes, policies and behaviors regarding biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) progressively change, a better understanding of how business strategies may be framed and implemented is required. In the first part of this paper, the authors discuss how biodiversity is usually understood as an external environmental constraint on business activities, and how this perception influences arbitrages. They then discuss how assessing BES interdependencies (impacts and dependencies) may bring about new business strategies and needs: they explore the opportunities and challenges of emerging mechanisms of payments for ecosystem services and expose the need for standardized sets of indicators at different scales for the effective management of their BES dependencies and impacts.