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The public–private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address “emergency” food needs and has since grown into a regularized social welfare system of grocery and meal provision and related program delivery, realized through the collective efforts of organizations and individuals. We explore the context, history, and organization of the PPFAS to better understand how and why public and private actors work together to provide for the social welfare of poor people. We find that the PPFAS is organized as a multiactor, multiscalar network within which the relations between state, market, and civil society are continuously negotiated. The PPFAS may seem like the quintessential example of privatized governance with its attendant movement of decision making outside of the public sphere Rather than consider the PPFAS as a neoliberal fait accompli, we view the PPFAS as a site of contestation about how social welfare and, more broadly, democratic governance is organized.

The limited understanding of how ecosystem service knowledge (ESK) is used in decision making constrains our ability to learn from, replicate, and convey success stories. We explore use of ESK in decision making in three international cases: national coastal planning in Belize; regional marine spatial planning on Vancouver Island, Canada; and regional land-use planning on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Decision makers, scientists, and stakeholders collaborated in each case to use a standardized ecosystem service accounting tool to inform spatial planning. We evaluate interview, survey, and observation data to assess evidence of ‘conceptual’, ‘strategic’, and ‘instrumental’ use of ESK. We find evidence of all modes: conceptual use dominates early planning, while strategic and instrumental uses occur iteratively in middle and late stages. Conceptual and strategic uses of ESK build understanding and compromise that facilitate instrumental use. We highlight attributes of ESK, characteristics of the process, and general conditions that appear to affect how knowledge is used. Meaningful participation, scenario development, and integration of local and traditional knowledge emerge as important for particular uses. Keywords: knowledge use, ecosystem services, spatial planning, decision making, science–policy interface