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The future of nature's contributions A recent Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has emphasized the urgent need to determine where and how nature's contribution matters most to people. Chaplin-Kramer et al. have developed a globalscale modeling of ecosystem services, focusing on water quality regulation, coastal protection, and crop pollination (see the Perspective by Balvanera). By 2050, up to 5 billion people may be at risk from diminishing ecosystem services, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Science , this issue p. 255 ; see also p. 184

Land is increasingly managed to serve multiple societal demands. Beyond food, fiber, habitation, and recreation, land is now being called on to meet demands for carbon sequestration, water purification, biodiversity conservation, and many others. Meeting these multiple demands requires negotiating trade-offs among the choices and differing values placed on them by diverse stakeholders and institutions. Here, we review recent advances in understanding the role of diverse values and trade-offs in managing landscapes to support multiple demands, from a land systems perspective. Recent work by the IPBES and others has recognized the need to accommodate a greater diversity of values into decision-making through the framework of ‘nature’s contributions to people (NCP)’ providing a perspective on human–nature relations that goes beyond a stock-flow, ecosystem services, decision-making framing. NCP offers real potential to enable land system science to better integrate the many diverse value systems of stakeholders and institutions into efforts to better understand and more fairly govern the increasingly wicked tradeoffs of land systems in the Anthropocene, especially under conditions of less well functioning institutions and governance.

Agricultural landscapes are dynamic environments which change in response to cropping and trade opportunities, available technologies and climatic conditions. In this article, we investigate farmers vulnerability to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility in rural Navarre, Spain. Specifically, we analyse the extent to which livelihood differences and vulnerability can be partly explained by the development of a large-scale irrigation project promoted by the Spanish and regional governments. Grounded on qualitative and quantitative data gathered across 22 villages, we demonstrate that small-scale diversified farmers appear the most vulnerable and least able to adapt to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility. In contrast, more market-driven, large-scale intensive farmers, who participate in the irrigation project, are the least vulnerable to these stressors. We argue that the irrigation project has increased the short-term adaptive capacity of irrigation adopters while establishing the institutional conditions for the displacement of small-scale farming. Therefore, we suggest that farmers vulnerability in Navarre can be explained by maladaptive irrigation policies designed to favour large-scale and market-driven agriculture. (c) 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. This article has received funds from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under the Grant agreement no.264465 (EcoFINDERS). This research is supported also by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714. Amaia Albizua also wants to thank the grant for contracts of Postdoctoral Training of the Education Department of the Basque Government. Esteve Corbera acknowledges the support of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Banco de Santander-Talent Retention Programme and the contribution of this article towards ICTA’s María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence 2015 (MDM-2015-0552)

Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures (1). Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally (2). World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies (3). We—a group of scientists spanning 46 countries and 6 continents—urge the WTO to make this commitment...

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Land-use intensification in agrarian landscapes is seen as a key strategy to simultaneously feed humanity and use ecosystems sustainably, but the conditions that support positive social-ecological outcomes remain poorly documented. We address this knowledge gap by synthesizing research that analyses how agricultural intensification affects both ecosystem services and human well-being in low- and middle-income countries. Overall, we find that agricultural intensification is rarely found to lead to simultaneous positive ecosystem service and well-being outcomes. This is particularly the case when ecosystem services other than food provisioning are taken into consideration.

One of the main debates surrounding payments for ecosystem services (PES) is to what extent should PES design focus on social equity concerns. While much of the debate is centered around theoretical arguments, here we focus empirically on the question of whether there are trade-offs between social-environmental effectiveness and social equity in PES design and implementation. Towards this end, we use a survey targeted at 61 PES practitioners in 12 Latin American countries, where equity is treated in a multidimensional way, not only including distributional concerns but also elements of recognition and procedure, reflected across a set of 15 indicators. Results suggest that PES which practitioners describe as being more equitable are also perceived to be more successful in jointly achieving the social-environmental goals of the PES program they are involved with. This suggests that from a practitioner perspective a concern for social equity may be advocated for not only from a normative stance ( because it is the right thing to do ), but also for instrumental reasons ( because it may contribute to PES success ). © 2020 Elsevier B.V. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change ?Unit of Excellence? (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, Mar?a Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaqu?n Salda?a, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (Grant number PI2015-1-103 ). B.L. and U.P. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change “Unit of Excellence” ( Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness ; MDM-2017-0714 ). We are thankful to Neville Ash, Brigitte Baptiste, Juan Camilo Cardenas, María Virginia Casasfranco, Eneko Garmendia, Phan Ha, Francesca Louise Mcgrath, Lucia Madrid, Ignacio Palomo, Ina Porras, Joaquín Saldaña, Leticia Santos de Lima, and Noelia Zafra-Calvo for their help disseminating the survey. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and and Adriana Maria Bernal Escobar, Esteve Corbera, Gert Van Hecken, Roldan Muradian, Meine Van Noordwijk, and Tobias Vorlaufer for their helpful comments to earlier drafts of the paper.

The social-ecological effects of agricultural intensification are complex. We explore farmers perceptions about the impacts of their land management and the impact of social information flows on their management through a case study in a farming community in Navarra, Spain, that is undergoing agricultural intensification due to adoption of large scale irrigation. We found that modern technology adopters are aware that their management practices often have negative social-ecological implications; by contrast, more traditional farmers tend to recognize their positive impacts on non-material benefits such as those linked with traditions and traditional knowledge, and climate regulation. We found that farmers awareness about nature contributions to people co-production and their land management decisions determine, in part, the structure of the social networks among the farming community. Since modern farmers are at the core of the social network, they are better able to control the information flow within the community. This has important implications, such as the fact that the traditional farmers, who are more aware of their impacts on the environment, rely on information controlled by more intensive modern farmers, potentially jeopardizing sustainable practices in this region. We suggest that this might be counteracted by helping traditional farmers obtain information tailored to their practices from outside the social network. © 2021 Albizua et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. AA, Eusko Jaurlaritza(Postdoctoral Scholarship); https://www.euskadi.eus/ informacion/ayudas-al-personal-investigadorprograma-posdoctoral/web01-a2hunib/es/; Ministerio de Econom?a y Competitividad(ES) (MDM-2017-0714). EB, Canadian Network for Research and Innovation in Machining Technology, Natural Sciences and EngineeringResearch Council of Canada RK, European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 648693).

Sustaining the organisms, ecosystems, and processes that underpin human well-being is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Here we identify critical natural assets, natural and semi-natural ecosystems that provide 90% of the total current magnitude of 14 types of nature’s contributions to people (NCP). Critical natural assets for maintaining local-scale NCP (12 of the 14 NCP mapped) comprise 30% of total global land area and 24% of national territorial waters, while 44% of land area is required for maintaining all NCP (including those that accrue at the global scale, carbon storage and moisture recycling). At least 87% of the world’s population lives in the areas benefiting from critical natural assets for local-scale NCP, while only 16% lives on the lands containing these assets. Critical natural assets also overlap substantially with areas important for biodiversity (covering area requirements for 73% of birds and 66% of mammals) and cultural diversity (representing 96% of global Indigenous and non-migrant languages). Many of the NCP mapped here are left out of international agreements focused on conserving species or mitigating climate change, yet this analysis shows that explicitly prioritizing critical natural assets for NCP could simultaneously advance development, climate, and conservation goals. Crafting policy and investment strategies that protect critical natural assets is essential for sustaining human well-being and securing Earth’s life support systems.

The recently published article by Albizua et al. (2020) contained an error. The reference to Guerrero et al. (2013), cited in the Introduction section of the paper, was missing in the list of references. Below the full reference is provided.

Social networks influence decision-making in agricultural landscapes by affecting how farmers access knowledge and resources. However, researchers ignore the disparate structures built to access different kinds of knowledge and resources and the social mechanisms that take place on such farmers’ advice networks. We explored the role of social networks in decision-making among farmers in Navarre (Spain) to understand how and why some practices spread among farming communities. Social network analysis allows us to understand how farmers in this region share both knowledge and resources, and the potential implications of this sharing for the landscape. We find that large-scale farmers undertaking intensive land management are at the core of the network in this region, controlling the flow of knowledge and resources related to farm management, policy, technology, and finance. The central position of these farmers in the social network, and their reputation, is key to the spread of intensive farming practices in the region, which ultimately may lead to homogenization of local agricultural landscapes. Understanding farmer network structures in a context of agricultural intensification can help tease out the social mechanisms, such as farmers joining each other in cooperatives, behind the spread of agricultural practices.

Replying to G. Wells et al. Nature Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0544-3 (2020).

This paper focuses on the potential use of insurance as a climate change adaptation mechanism in agriculture. We analyse the attractiveness of a climate risk insurance scheme and the choices farmers face between adaptation via farm management practices and purchase of crop insurance in the market. A choice experiment is used to reveal Danish farmers preferences regarding an insurance contract where adoption of land management practices to improve soil sustainability is conditional for obtaining insurance cover in the market. Results indicate that in general arable farmers and farmers with low soil quality who have experienced crop damages in the past are more likely to purchase such conditional insurance. Farmers with good quality soils, who perceive that they have already adapted their practices to climatic risks and who have not experienced losses due to adverse climatic events in the past are less willing to purchase insurance. The paper contributes to the limited knowledge on preferences for climate risk related insurance in agricultural systems in general, and in Europe in particular. © 2019 The paper was prepared under EU Framework 7 project “Ecological Function and Biodiversity Indicators in European soils” (ECOFINDERS grant no. 264465 ). Furthermore, the paper has benefited from support from the PREAR project (No 652615) granted under the FACCE SURPLUS ERA-NET Cofund and funded by the Danish Innovation Fund .

Plural valuation is about eliciting the diverse values of nature articulated by different stakeholders in order to inform decision making and thus achieve more equitable and sustainable outcomes. We explore what approaches align with plural valuation on the ground, as well as how different social-ecological contexts play a role in translating plural valuation into decisions and outcomes. Based on a co-constructed analytical approach relying on empirical information from ten cases from the Global South, we find that plural valuation contributes to equitable and sustainable outcomes if the valuation process: 1) is based on participatory value elicitation approaches; 2) is framed with a clear action-oriented purpose; 3) provides space for marginalized stakeholders to articulate their values in ways that can be included in decisions; 4) is used as a tool to identify and help reconcile different cognitive models about human-nature relations; and 5) fosters open communication and collaboration among stakeholders. We also find that power asymmetries can hinder plural valuation. As interest and support for undertaking plural valuation grows, a deeper understanding is needed regarding how it can be adapted to different purposes, approaches, and social-ecological contexts in order to contribute to social equity and sustainability. Fil: Zafra-Calvo, Noelia. Basque Centre For Climate Change; España Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Pascual, Unai. Basque Centre For Climate Change; España Fil: Merçon, Juliana. Universidad Veracruzana; México Fil: Martín López, Berta. Leuphana University Of Lüneburg; Alemania Fil: van Noordwijk, Meine. World Agroforestry Centre; Indonesia Fil: Mwampamba, Tuyeni Heita. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Lele, Sharachchandra. Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environmen; India Fil: Ifejika Speranza, Chinwe. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Arias-Arévalo, Paola. Universidad del Valle; Colombia Fil: Cabrol, Diego. 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. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina Fil: Caceres, Daniel Mario. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: O'Farrell, Patrick. Council For Scientific And Industrial Research; Sudáfrica Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha Mazhenchery. United Nations University. Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability; Japón Fil: Devy, Soubadra. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environmen; India Fil: Krishnan, Siddhartha. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environmen; India Fil: Carmenta, Rachel. University of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Guibrunet, Louise. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Kraus-Elsin, Yoanna. Instituto Humboldt; Colombia Fil: Moersberger, Hannah. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia Fil: Cariño, Joji. Forest Peoples Programm; Reino Unido 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

The literature on payments for ecosystem services (PES) applied in regions where indigenous peoples are key social actors has not cast much light on their preferences regarding the framing and design features that such economic incentives should have to ensure their effectiveness. Thus, it is key to find appropriate approaches that can be used to elicit the preferences of indigenous peoples regarding PES design. Here we provide new insights regarding the use of deliberative valuation to elicit of the preferences of an indigenous community from Colombia towards the design of a PES program. A deliberative choice experiment is applied that sheds light on why indigenous people's perspectives need to be taken into account if PES are to be effective and fair. We find that participants from the indigenous community value highly equity considerations that go beyond the monetary benefit that PES provide, such as being able to meaningfully participate in the design of PES or deciding the fairest way to distribute payments. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation , the Department of Education, Language Policy and Culture of the Basque government (grant number PI2015-1-103 and IT1359-19 [UPV/EHU Econometrics Research Group]), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714 and through grant ECO2017-82111-R.

Relational values as preferences, principles and virtues about human-nature relationships have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. The term has been used to include concepts and knowledge from a wide range of social sciences and humanities, e.g., importantly making space for qualitative approaches often neglected within environmental management and science. Meanwhile, crucial questions have emerged. What counts as a relational value, and what does not? How do relational values (RVs) compare with other value categories and terms, including held, assigned, instrumental, moral, shared, social, and non-material values (e.g., associated with cultural ecosystem services)? In this article, we address these issues, partly by providing context about how the RV term originated and how it has evolved to date. Most importantly, because of their somewhat unique combination of groundedness and moral relevance, positive relational values may offer important opportunities for the evolution of values that may be necessary for transformative change towards sustainability. The special issue includes contributions that contemplate particular concepts (e.g., care, stewardship, eudaimonia human flourishing), applications (e.g., environmental assessment, environmental policy design), and the history of relevant scholarship in various intellectual traditions (e.g., ecological economics, human ecology, environmental education). Together with this suite of thought-provoking papers, we hope that the clarification we provide here facilitates a broad and productive interdisciplinary exchange to create and refine a reflective but powerful tool for sustainability and justice. © 2018 We have been funded by a Canadian SSHRC Insight Grant (#435-2017-1071) and a UBC Killam Research Fellowship (KC).

Increased drought frequency in many parts of the world, especially in the global South, is expected due to accelerating climate change. We present a bioeconomic model that unpacks the role of soil biodiversity as contributing to both increasing and stabilizing agricultural productivity in low-input rainfed farming systems. The natural insurance value of soil biodiversity mostly depends on farmers' risk preferences as well as on the frequency of drought events to be insured against. We show that when the probability of drought increases, soil biodiversity conservation can be an optimal ecosystem-based adaptation strategy. However, this is only likely to be the case up to a given drought probability threshold. The natural insurance value of soil biodiversity for climate change adaptation in drought prone rainfed agricultural systems depends on a combination of key hydrological, agronomic and economic parameters. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) constitute an innovative economic intervention to counteract the global loss of biodiversityand ecosystem functions. In theory, some appealing features should enable PES to perform well in achieving conservationand welfare goals. In practice, outcomes depend on the interplay between context, design and implementation. Inspecting anew global dataset, we find that some PES design principles pre-identified in the social-science literature as desirable, such asspatial targeting and payment differentiation, are only partially being applied in practice. More importantly, the PES-definingprinciple of conditionality—monitoring compliance and sanctioning detected non-compliance—is seldom being implemented.Administrative ease, multiple non-environmental side objectives and social equity concerns may jointly help explain the reluctanceto adopt more sophisticated, theoretically informed practices. However, by taking simplifying shortcuts in design andimplementation, PES programmes may become less environmentally effective and efficient as economic incentives, thus underperformingtheir conservation potential.

Acknowledging the diversity of preferences, goals and motivations of individuals is key to promote the effectiveness of incentive-based conservation interventions. This paper analyses the heterogeneity of motivations to adopt silvopastoral practices, a social-ecological innovation for soil conservation and carbon emission reduction. We use Q methodology to identify smallholders' views with regard to these practices in a community in the forest frontier in Chiapas (Mexico). The analysis uncovers three main perspectives: self-sufficient pioneers, environmentally-conscious followers and payment-dependent conservatives. We discuss these perspectives around three topics: smallholders' predisposition to adopt silvopastoral practices, their views about needing external payments to sustain their livelihood and the diffusion of innovative sustainable practices. We relate these perspectives with livelihood characteristics and with observed adoption levels under a pilot programme to promote silvopasture. Our findings suggest that incentives other than payments may be more appropriate for those more likely to adopt, and that payments could encourage rent-seeking strategies and not necessarily promote permanent behavioural change. We suggest ways for designing more effective and adaptive environmental conservation programmes to foster adoption and continuation of social-ecological innovations.

The program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the major attempts to tackle climate change mitigation in developing countries. REDD+ seeks to provide result-based incentives to promote emission reductions and increase carbon sinks in forest land while promoting other cobenefits, such as the conservation of biodiversity. We model different scenarios of international REDD+ funds distribution toward potential recipient countries using 2 carbon emission reduction targets (20% and 50% compared to the baseline scenario, i.e., deforestation and forest degradation without REDD+) by 2030. The model combines the prioritization of environmental outcomes in terms of carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation and social equity, accounting for the equitable distribution of international REDD+ funds. Results highlight the synergy between carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation under alternative fund allocation criteria, especially for scenarios of low carbon emission reduction. Trade-offs increase when distributional equity is considered as an additional criterion, especially under higher equity requirements. The analysis helps to better understand the inherent trade-offs between enhancing distributional equity and meeting environmental targets under alternative REDD+ fund allocation options. (c) 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. I.P. is supported by a grant by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (IJCI-2016–28475). I.P., U.P., and M.J.S. are supported under the Basque Centre for Climate Change “Unit of Excellence” (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; MDM-2017-0714).

The Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 11 requires its 193 signatory parties to incorporate social equity into protected area (PA) management by 2020. However, there is limited evidence of progress toward this commitment. We surveyed PA managers, staff, and community representatives involved in the management of 225 PAs worldwide to gather information against 10 equity criteria, including the distribution of benefits and burdens, recognition of rights, diversity of cultural and knowledge systems, and processes of participation in decision-making. Our results show that more than half of the respondents indicated that there are still significant challenges to be addressed in achieving equitably managed PAs, particularly in ensuring effective participation in decision-making, transparent procedures, access to justice in conflicting situations, and the recognition of the rights and diversity of local people. Our findings are a first and fundamental contribution toward a global assessment of equitable management in PAs to report on Aichi Target 11 in 2020 and help define the next set of PA targets from 2020-2030. We are thankful to Naomi Kingston, Phil Franks and Adrian Martin, who provided insightful comments on the manuscript, and to all respondents to this questionnaire and all organizations that helped us to distribute it, especially to Heather Bingham. This work is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program under the MSCA grant agreement no. 659881 to NZ-C and supported by a JCFG from the Spanish MEC to IP (IJCI-2016-28475). NZ-C and NDB also acknowledge the DNRF for funding for CMEC, grant no. DNRF96.

Large-scale irrigation is a form of agricultural intensification aimed at increasing productivity and adapting to climate change. However, we know little about how large-scale irrigation affects socio-cultural values over nature's contributions to people (NCP) in agrarian systems. In this article, we fill this gap by investigating how a large-scale irrigation project in Navarre, Spain, has affected farmers values in relation to their farming systems and the local environment. We find that large-scale farmers who participate in the irrigation project value more highly regulating NCP than small-scale farmers who have not adopted such technology, while the latter hold higher values for non-material NCP related to cultural identity and traditional knowledge and experience. These findings suggest that the adoption of large-scale irrigation technology is associated with a set of values that underestimate the long-term ecological effects of agricultural intensification and neglect the relevance of traditional farming in sustaining more ecologically and culturally diverse landscapes. (c) 2019 Elsevier B.V. Amaia Albizua and Unai Pascual acknowledge support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation program MDM-2017-0714 . Unai Pascual and Amaia Albizua also acknowledge support from the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013) under the Grant agreement no. 264465 (EcoFINDERS). Amaia Albizua also wants to thank the grant for contracts of Postdoctoral Training of the Education Department of the Basque Government. Esteve Corbera acknowledges the support of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Banco de Santander-Talent Retention Programme and the contribution of this article towards ICTA

Crop choice, including the conservation of traditional crops and the uptake of novel ones, is a central issue in agricultural development. This paper examines differences between male and female farmers’ motivations for growing diverse crop portfolios in Papua New Guinea, a highly agro-biodiverse context facing rapid social change. Q methodology, a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach, is used to examine how alignment with different viewpoints related to crop diversity differs across male and female farmers. We show that, of five distinct ‘types’ of farmers identified with regards to crop diversity choices, all include both men and women, and three of five groups show no significant gender-related differences. However, there are also some significant gender differences. A large proportion of women farmers associate with being highly motivated by crop marketing, whereas male farmers are more likely to favor agricultural diversity due to tradition or status motivations. Overall, strict gendering of crops does not appear highly salient. The results confirm earlier work in the region on women’s roles in marketing but contrast to those on crop gendering. Altogether, they underline the complexity of gender and identity in agricultural choices. The results also have implications for the targeting and implementation of crop conservation and promotion policies and programs, including those aiming for improved nutrition or agricultural development.

Although power relations largely mediate access, use and management of ecosystems, they have not yet been considered in ecosystem services science. This omission limits the ability of the ecosystem services approach to guide environmental decision-making that can deliver ecological sustainability and socially fair outcomes. We propose three ways to address power relations more centrally: (1) analyze how power relations underpin the governance and institutions that determine access to and control over ecosystem services; (2) assess how labor relations around ecosystem services co-production impact human well-being; and (3) recognize the historical co-evolution of power relations and environmental change in shaping ecosystem services values. We believe that IPBES offers a unique opportunity to orchestrate transdisciplinary efforts to integrate power relations in ecosystem assessments.

Transformative change for urban sustainability and resilience calls for the use of new governance approaches that take into account the complexity of urban systems and associated stakeholder knowledge and perceptions. This raises the need to explore the cognitive dimension in the management of urban resilience and transformation. The article presents a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping approach to develop plausible policy scenarios that support the decarbonisation of the urban energy system of the city of Bilbao, Basque Country. Scenario results indicate that a combination of local institutional and social action may be most conducive for stimulating effective and sustainable transformation of Bilbao's urban energy system. We address the properties of the resulting cognitive network, with a focus on the role of the energy system's connectivity which is found to present conflicting potential for resilience and transformation.

In assessment of costs (and benefits) of wildlife conservation, conventional economic valuation frameworks may inadequately address various non-tangible values and neglect social, cultural and political contexts of resources and their use. Correspondingly, there seems to be much more focus on quantifying the economic, material benefits and costs of wildlife conservation than the non-material aspects that also affect human well-being. In addition, current research on the costs of wildlife conservation tends to be discipline-focused which constrains comparability, often causing conceptual ambiguity. This paper is an attempt to address this ambiguity. While there is growing acknowledgement of the material costs of wildlife conservation, we contend that employing a broader, composite social well-being approach may provide better conceptual insights on—and practical options for—managing various non-material impacts of wildlife conservation for local people. Non-material impacts such as negative physical or psychological experiences, trauma, feelings of fear and anxiety cannot directly be measured by or converted to money but such impacts still lead to human ill-being. Thus, taking these impacts into account is critical for the broader sustainability of wildlife conservation, making understanding and addressing them a key socio-ecological issue.

Sustainability is a key challenge for humanity in the context of complex and unprecedented global changes. Future Earth, an international research initiative aiming to advance global sustainability science, has recently launched knowledge action networks (KANs) as mechanisms for delivering its research strategy. The research initiative is currently developing a KAN on natural assets to facilitate and enable action-oriented research and synthesis towards natural assets sustainability. Natural assets has been adopted by Future Earth as an umbrella term aiming to translate and bridge across different knowledge systems and different perspectives on peoples relationships with nature. In this paper, we clarify the framing of Future Earth around natural assets emphasizing the recognition on pluralism and identifying the challenges of translating different visions about the role of natural assets, including via policy formulation, for local to global sustainability challenges. This understanding will be useful to develop inter-and transdisciplinary solutions for human environmental problems by (i) embracing richer collaborative decision processes and building bridges across different perspectives; (ii) giving emphasis on the interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic drivers affecting the future trends of investments and disinvestments in natural assets; and (iii) focusing on social equity, power relationships for effective application of the natural assets approach. This understanding also intends to inform the scope of the natural asset KAN s research agenda to mobilize the translation of research into co-designed action for sustainability. © 2018, The Author(s). We thank the University of Bern for hosting the meeting, and Future Earth and SCNAT for providing financial support. MMH and SG are supported by the Centre of Applied Ecology and Sustainability CAPES FB 0002-2014. MMH is supported by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico FONDECYT 318011.

This paper addresses the importance of the cognitive dimension in urban sustainability transition policy practice. Many and diverse actors with contrasting interests interact in urban sustainability transitions. Their perceptions and values impact the potential uptake of transition strategies in urban systems. It is thus important to understand how actors view themselves involved in such processes. A case study on low carbon transitions for the city of Bilbao (Basque Country) is presented to explore the barriers and opportunities for an energy transition using Q methodology. Results suggest that stakeholders' motivation and perceived capacity for change are mainly related to four main discourses: follower, visionary, pragmatist and sceptic. Results also indicate that information exchange, communication and participation in decision-making processes, bridging visionaries and pragmatists with decision-makers, are key for bringing about effective transition processes. This study contributes to identifying attitudes of actors who can negotiate urban low-carbon transitions and stresses the need to build a common shared cognitive vision of whether and how sustainable urban transformation can take place.

Agricultural intensification has contributed substantially to the increase in food production, but has come at the expense of soil degradation and environmental problems. Management of soil based ecosystem services need to be considered in agricultural management since intensive management implies not only costs to the farmer but also to society. In this study we used data from four long-term (55 years) agricultural experiments in southern Sweden to assess the effects of two arable farming systems on a range of indicators of soil ecosystem services. One farming system used only annual commodity crops (ACC system) while the other integrated one year of ley (ley system) into the crop rotation. Nitrogen (N) fertiliser was applied annually in both farming systems at two rates (0 and 150 kg N ha(-1)). The ley farming system had an addition of farmyard manure (FYM) once every fourth year. Soil organic carbon, total N, phosphorous, potassium, pH and water holding capacity were used as indicators of regulating services; bacterial and fungal biomass were used as indicators of supporting services; grain yield and protein content were used as indicators of provisioning services. We analysed each of the indicators separately, to identify effects of the farming systems, using linear mixed effects models. In addition, we used principal components analysis to bundle the individual indicators together to create latent variables representing categories of ecosystem services. Yields of wheat were greatest in the plots that received N fertiliser, irrespective of farming system, while mycorrhizal fungal biomass was greatest in the ley system with no inorganic N fertiliser. The rest of the indicators were similar in both farming systems although the lowest values of all ecosystem service indicators were found in the ACC system with no N fertiliser. When bundling the indicators, no trade-offs were found between regulating, supporting and provisioning services. Regulating and supporting services were positively correlated, as were regulating and provisioning services. The ley system with N fertiliser had significantly greater values of regulating and provisioning services relative to the other treatments. The results indicate that different farming systems can have large effects on ecosystem service flows, and that integrating leys into arable rotations can enhance the delivery of soil ecosystem services. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (Less)

Managing protected areas (PAs) requires dealing with complex social-ecological systems where multiple dimensions (i.e. social, institutional, economic and ecological) interact over time. Uni-dimensional and top-down approaches have been unable to capture this complexity. Instead, new integrated approaches that acknowledge the multidimensional nature of PAs and the diversity of social actors in the decision making process are required. In this paper we put forward a novel participatory assessment approach which integrates multiple methodologies to reflect value articulating institutions in the case of a Natura 2000 (N2000) network site in the Basque Country (Southern Europe). This novel approach is based on a social multi-criteria evaluation framework, that integrates (i) economic values derived from a choice experiment, (ii) ecological values by means of a spatial bio-geographic assessment, and (iii) a participatory process among diverse social actors. The case study shows that through the integration of diverse perspectives it is possible to achieve compromise solutions that foster the ecological values of PAs while enhancing other socio-economic benefits. Such co-benefits are important to enhance the acceptance and scope of N2000 and overcome undesirable social-ecological conflicts. We also show that the inclusion of all affected parties in a deliberative process is a key prerequisite to ensure ecologically effective and socially acceptable decisions that will lead to sustainable conservation policies.

In this chapter, Unai Pascual and colleagues address the link between sustainable forest management initiatives, the climate change policy arena and foreign aid. Pascual et al. discuss the role of foreign aid in helping to achieve sustainable forest management, framing this as the condition for delivering multiple ecosystem services, and considering the potential for donor support for the forestry sector associated with new climate finance. The chapter explores the conditions for promoting forest conservation through foreign aid, taking into account the varying interests of multiple actors. The authors warn that while REDD+ financing, catalysed by foreign aid, has the potential to move beyond traditional sustainable forest management efforts, the mechanism still faces uncertainty over the long-term sustainability of financing, thus affecting the scalability of the mechanism.

The institutional change induced by payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes is a ‘messy’ process. The uptake and outcomes of PES schemes cannot be fully explained from a rational choice perspective. The notion of ‘institutional bricolage’ is needed to analyse how actors assemble or reshape their actions by combining new institutions such as a PES scheme within other locally embedded institutions. A case study from Japan is used to illustrate how a PES scheme designed to conserve the habitat of a charismatic and endangered flagship species, the Oriental White Stork, has been reshaped by social actors to fit the locally dominant ‘institutional logic’. We also show how the resulting institutional change is not only able to subvert policy makers' original assumptions, for instance about how to target and distribute the payments, but can also contribute to the reproduction of unequal power relations.

Aichi Target 11 (AT11), adopted by 193 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010, states that protected areas (PAs) must be equitably managed by 2020. However, significant challenges remain in terms of actual implementation of equitable management in PAs. These challenges include, among others, the lack of a standardized approach to assess and monitor social equity and the difficulty of reducing social equity to a series of metrics. This perspective addresses these challenges and it proposes a minimum set of ten indicators for assessing and monitoring the three dimensions of social equity in protected areas: recognition, procedure and distribution. The indicators target information on social equity regarding cultural identity, statutory and customary rights, knowledge diversity; free, prior and informed consent mechanisms, full participation and transparency in decision-making, access to justice, accountability over decisions, distribution of conservation burdens, and sharing of conservation benefits. The proposed indicator system is a first step in advancing an approach to facilitate our understanding of how the different dimensions of social equity are denied or recognized in PAs globally. The proposed system would be used by practitioners to mainstream social equity indicators in PAs assessments at the site level and to report to the CBD on the ‘equitably managed’ element of AT11.

We examine the emergence of land markets and their effects on forest land appropriation by farm households in Jambi Province, Sumatra, using micro-level data covering land use and land transactions for a period of more than 20 years (1992 2015). Based on a theoretical model of land acquisition by a heterogeneous farming population, different hypotheses are developed and empirically tested. Farm households involved in forest land appropriation differ from those involved in land market purchases in terms of migration status and other socioeconomic characteristics. In principle, these differences provide opportunities for market-induced deforestation. However, the appropriated forest land is not extensively traded, which we attribute to the lack of de jure property right protection and the resulting undervaluation in the market. While the de facto property right protection under customary law provides sufficient security within the village community, the sense of external tenure security is low when the land cannot be formally titled. Clearing forests for trading in the land market is, therefore, financially less lucrative for farm households than engaging in own cultivation of plantation crops, such as oil palm and rubber. We conclude that land markets did not have significant effects on deforestation. On the other hand, the emergence of land markets alone has also not been able to deter forest appropriation by local farm households. (c) 2017 The Author(s) This study was undertaken as part of the research project SFB 990.Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems, Sumatra (Indonesia)- (EFForTS) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Highlights • Empirical evidence: privatisation of conservation choices of biodiversity patrimony. • Strong privatisation of microbe category with marked collective good properties. • Worldwide survey of 103 ex situ collections. • Possibly skewing the future ex situ patrimony away from low probability-high impact events., Public service (ex situ) micro-organism collections serve to secure genetic resources for unforeseen future needs, and importantly, to provide authenticated biomaterials for contemporaneous use in private and public entities and as upstream research materials. Hence, it is important to understand the functioning and strategic decisions of these providers of public good resources.2 The existing literature tends to use case studies of individual collections. This paper uses a unique worldwide survey of microbial collections to analyse the heterogeneity among culture collections, and to empirically assess the economic and institutional conditions that contribute to this heterogeneity with respect to conservation choice and associated industry spillovers. Results suggest that in the short run public-private partnerships may indeed support knowledge accumulation with particularly strong public good properties. It is important to be aware of this strong tie, in order to steer also the long term conservation patrimony into one that offers not only short term usability but also resilience to future unforeseen needs e.g. of emerging crop plagues.

This paper provides insights into the multiple dimensions of fairness in payments for ecosystem services (PES) using the results of pilot agrobiodiversity conservation auctions. In two sites in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes farming groups bid for payments for the conservation of traditional crop varieties. We assess different payment rules relating to how to allocate payments among groups subject to a fixed conservation budget. The discriminatory, uniform and conditional payment rules tested in these case studies incorporate alternative principles of fairness, while resulting in varying conservation and distributional outcomes. The latter are measured in terms of the distributional equality of payments among farmers and groups, and the distributional effects of payments on different types of groups. Findings indicate that conservation and distributional outcomes are highly sensitive to the payment rule chosen and vary across study sites. There may be contexts where cost-effectiveness does not need to be traded-off against fairness. Yet given the number of competing fairness considerations, achieving PES outcomes that are perceived as fair is very challenging.

This paper provides an estimate of the contribution of the ecosystem to the provisioning services generated by agriculture. This is achieved by valuing the changes in productivity generated by a marginal alteration in ecosystem inputs. As an example, we consider the variation in rainfall and temperature projected by the recent UK Climate Impacts Programme. The analysis implements a spatially explicit, econometric model of agricultural land use based on the methodology recently developed by Fezzi and Bateman (Am J Agric Econ 93:1168–1188, 2011). Land use area and livestock stocking rates are then employed to calculate farm gross margin estimates of the value of changes in provisioning ecosystem services. Findings suggest that the variation in ecosystem inputs induced by climate change will have substantial influence on agricultural productivity. Interestingly, within the UK context climate change generates mainly positive effects, although losses are forecasted for those southern areas most vulnerable to heat-stress and drought.

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). Incipient REDD+ forest carbon policies in a number of countries propose agricultural intensification measures to replace extensive “slash-and-burn” farming systems. These may result in conservation in some contexts, but will also increase future agricultural land rents as productivity increases, creating new incentives for agricultural expansion and deforestation. While robust governance can help to ensure land sparing, we propose that conservation incentives will also have to increase over time, tracking future agricultural land rents, which might lead to runaway conservation costs. We present a conceptual framework that depicts these relationships, supported by an illustrative model of the intensification of key crops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a leading REDD+ country. A von Thünen land rent model is combined with geographic information systems mapping to demonstrate how agricultural intensification could influence future conservation costs. Once postintensification agricultural land rents are considered, the cost of reducing forest sector emissions could significantly exceed current and projected carbon credit prices. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering escalating conservation costs from agricultural intensification when designing conservation initiatives.

article i nfo This paper examines the role of direct compensation payments for agrobiodiversity conservation, using minor millet landraces in India as an example. The cost of farmer participation in a hypothetical 'payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services' (PACS) scheme is estimated using a stated preference valuation approach. Significant inter-crop and inter-varietal differences are observed with respect to consumption values, upon which the compensation demanded by farm households is shown to primarily depend. Drawing on a categorisation of consumption values and farmer preferences, the paper points to the importance of si- multaneously considering a range of potential interventions in order to conserve a priority portfolio of agrobiodiverse resources in predominantly subsistence-based agricultural systems.

Summary This paper addresses the relevance of agricultural seed systems in terms of the production and dissemination of seed in the context of adaptation to climate change. Using nationwide household level data from Malawi, we examine the hypothesis that climatic shocks increase small-scale farmers’ reliance on purchased seeds, in particular from local seed markets, an element of the informal seed sector. The results are used to discuss the role of seed systems for potentially supporting small-scale farmers’ adaptation mechanisms in the face of climate change in Malawi. This study has implications for other similar sub-Saharan African contexts.

In this commentary we critically discuss the suitability of payments for ecosystem services and the most important challenges they face. While such instruments can play a role in improving environmental governance, we argue that over-reliance on payments as win-win solutions might lead to ineffective outcomes, similar to earlier experience with integrated conservation and development projects. Our objective is to raise awareness, particularly among policy makers and practitioners, about the limitations of such instruments and to encourage a dialogue about the policy contexts in which they might be appropriate.

Research on ecosystem services has become a dominant field within environmental management, framing the way in which human–nature relationships are understood and managed. Although ecosystem services are usually defined as ‘the benefits that humans receive from nature’, our work shows that most services are actually co-produced by a mixture of natural capital and various forms of social, human, financial and technological capital. Here, we review how ecosystem services are co-produced, and then we assess how this affects the quantity, quality, trade-offs, resilience and the equity of the distribution of ecosystem services. Then we discuss the implications of co-production for sustainability. Finally, we present some challenges for an adequate consideration of co-production within the assessment of ecosystem services.

Summary This paper explores the potential effects of external reward systems on conservation behavior by accounting for their interactions with patterns of collective action. In order to simulate such dynamics, we conducted framed field experiments in farming communities from the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. These game-based simulation exercises were framed around agrobiodiversity conservation decisions the participating farmers were very familiar with. We find that collective rewards could be ineffective and crowd-out social norms. Promisingly though, individual rewards appear to increase conservation levels through a crowding-in effect that stabilizes collective action.

Making decisions about optimal investments in green infrastructure necessitates setting social discount rates. This paper suggests a practical way for determining the discount rate for projects or programmes in which one of the options is to maintain or improve land in its natural state. We propose an A¢Â€Âœequivalency principleA¢Â€Â to derive a simple rule that sets the discount rate. The rule is based on the premise that the long term value of a naturally preserved land track ought to be at least the same as the value of an identical land track in the vicinity to which permission has been granted for development. We illustrate this principle with various case studies and we apply it to a contentious investment project in the Basque Country associated with the regeneration of a large scale harbour in the province of Gipuzkoa (North of Spain) that involves reclaiming natural land that has important ecological value, including for the conservation of a marine ecosystem.

In this paper we present a multi-disciplinary analysis of the potential impacts of undertaking similar environmental actions on multiple farms in a small geographic area, using organic farming as a proxy for a co-ordinated approach. Recent papers have called for more co-ordinated efforts between farmers in terms of their environmental actions, but there has been limited applied research demonstrating the environmental benefits or the economic and social implications to farmers of this approach. Comparative analysis of biodiversity, soil and water, and farm profitability were undertaken in England on 32 matched farms in areas of low and high organic farming concentration; qualitative interviews were also conducted with 48 farmers living in two of the eight areas. Findings demonstrate higher overall levels of biodiversity on organic farms (particularly in “hotspot” areas) but this was not universal across the species groups investigated. Higher water infiltration rates were found in organic grasslands, which could prove to be a useful measure to combat flooding. In terms of the technical efficiency of producing these environmental gains, conventional and organic farms in hotspot areas demonstrated equivalent efficiency from a financial perspective. Socio-cultural research identified the different amounts of trust farmers have in their neighbours, based in part on their performance as ‘good farmers’. We discuss the neighbourhood effect with a multi-disciplinary approach and conclude that encouraging local farmer co-ordination can have clear environmental benefits without high economic cost, but must be undertaken with caution – specifically regarding the trade-offs between benefits, local geophysical and social characteristics, and assumptions made about inter-farmer trust.

This meta-analysis of land-cover transformations of the past 10–15 years in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers world-wide shows that swidden agriculture decreases in landscapes with access to local, national and international markets that encourage cattle production and cash cropping, including biofuels. Conservation policies and practices also accelerate changes in swidden by restricting forest clearing and encouraging commercial agriculture. However, swidden remains important in many frontier areas where farmers have unequal or insecure access to investment and market opportunities, or where multi-functionality of land uses has been preserved as a strategy to adapt to current ecological, economic and political circumstances. In some areas swidden remains important simply because intensification is not a viable choice, for example when population densities and/or food market demands are low. The transformation of swidden landscapes into more intensive land uses has generally increased household incomes, but has also led to negative effects on the social and human capital of local communities to varying degrees. From an environmental perspective, the transition from swidden to other land uses often contributes to permanent deforestation, loss of biodiversity, increased weed pressure, declines in soil fertility, and accelerated soil erosion. Our prognosis is that, despite the global trend towards land use intensification, in many areas swidden will remain part of rural landscapes as the safety component of diversified systems, particularly in response to risks and uncertainties associated with more intensive land use systems.

To examine management options for biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, eight research regions were classified into social-ecological domains, using a dataset of indicators of livelihood resources, i.e., capital assets. Potential interventions for biodiversity-based agriculture were then compared among landscapes and domains. The approach combined literature review with expert judgment by researchers working in each landscape. Each landscape was described for land use, rural livelihoods and attitudes of social actors toward biodiversity and intensification of agriculture. Principal components analysis of 40 indicators of natural, human, social, financial and physical capital for the eight landscapes showed a loss of biodiversity associated with high-input agricultural intensification. High levels of natural capital (e.g. indicators of wildland biodiversity conservation and agrobiodiversity for human needs) were positively associated with indicators of human capital, including knowledge of the flora and fauna and knowledge sharing among farmers. Three social-ecological domains were identified across the eight landscapes (Tropical Agriculture-Forest Matrix, Tropical Degrading Agroecosystem, and Temperate High-Input Commodity Agriculture) using hierarchical clustering of the indicator values. Each domain shared a set of interventions for biodiversity-based agriculture and ecological intensification that could also increase food security in the impoverished landscapes. Implementation of interventions differed greatly among the landscapes, e.g. financial capital for new farming practices in the Intensive Agriculture domain vs. developing market value chains in the other domains. This exploratory study suggests that indicators of knowledge systems should receive greater emphasis in the monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and that inventories of assets at the landscape level can inform adaptive management of agrobiodiversity-based interventions.

SUMMARYInternationally, there is political impetus towards providing incentive mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), that motivate land users to conserve that which benefits wider society by creating an exchange value for conservation services. PES may incorporate a number of conservation goals other than just maximizing the area under a certain land use, so as to optimize multiple benefits from environmental conservation. Environmental additionality (conservation services generated relative to no intervention) and social equity aspects (here an equitable distribution of conservation funds) of PES depend on the conservation goals underlying the cost-effective targeting of conservation payments, which remains to be adequately explored in the PES literature. This paper attempts to evaluate whether multiple conservation goals can be optimized, in addition to social equity, when paying for the on-farm conservation of neglected crop varieties (landraces), so as to generate agrobiodiversity conservation services. Case studies based on a conservation auction in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes (through which community-based groups identified the conservation area and the number of farmers taking part in conservation, as well as the payment required), identified significant cost-effectiveness tradeoffs between alternative agrobiodiversity conservation goals. There appears to be a non-complementary relationship between maximizing conservation area under specific landraces (a proxy for genetic diversity maintenance) and the number of farmers conserving such landraces (a proxy for agricultural knowledge and cultural traditions maintenance). Neither of the two are closely connected with maximizing the number of targeted farming communities (a proxy for informal seed exchange networks and hence geneflow maintenance). Optimizing cost-effectiveness with regard to conservation area or number of farmers would also be associated with a highly unequal distribution of payments. Multi-criteria targeting approaches can reach compromise solutions, but frameworks for these are still to be established and scientifically informed about the underlying link between alternative conservation goals and conservation service provision.

Urbanization presents both opportunities and challenges for farmers and farm-supporting sectors on the urban fringe. This paper examines the effects of urbanization on the viability of input suppliers and output processors and on the cost and profitability of farming. An analytical model is developed to provide insights into such effects. This model motivates a multiple-equation empirical model that we estimate using county-level panel data for California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Results provide evidence that urbanization has a significant impact on agricultural infrastructure, farm production costs, and net farm income and suggest that agriculture-related opportunities of urbanization outweigh the challenges.