Ecosystem services research in Latin America: The state of the art

Abstract

Ecosystem services science has developed at a fast rate in Latin America, a region characterized by a high biological and cultural diversity, strong emphasis in foreign investment, and high socioeconomic inequities. Here we conducted the following analyses at the regional and national scales: (1) how and when did the study of ecosystem services arise in each country?, (2) what is our present understanding of ecosystem service supply, delivery to societies, and social and economic values?, (3) what is the state of the art in integrating tradeoffs among services and in using interdisciplinary perspectives?, and (4) how has ecosystem service research been connected to policy design or management for sustainability? A large literature review (>1000 references) showed that in Latin America ES supply and links to policy have been the most frequently assessed. Overall, emphasis has been placed on a few services, namely carbon and water. Payments for ecosystem services have received considerable attention in the region, though with strong differences across nations and with important limitations in their application. The future of the ecosystem service paradigm in Latin America will largely depend on its capacity to demonstrate effectiveness in meeting both conservation and development goals.

Introduction

Ecosystem services (ES) science has developed at a very fast rate over the last decades (Nicholson et al., 2009). The recent growth of ES science can be attributed to the usefulness of ecosystem services as a concept that explicitly links ecosystems to human needs. Yet, the specific application, focus, and outcome of the ES research framework and resulting interventions cannot be interpreted without attention to the way we define such approaches, and to the historical, geographic, and political context in which it develops.

Ecosystem services benefit human societies at multiple levels (Tallis et al., in press). ES supply is the potential beneficial contribution of ecological functions or biophysical elements in an ecosystem to humans, irrespective of whether humans actually use or value that function or element. Potential flood regulation depends on several biophysical factors such as precipitation, topography, soil and land cover characteristics (Bathurst et al., 2011). ES delivery represents the actual contact of the potential supply of the service with human populations, and takes into account the spatial distribution of people and infrastructure. For example, fuel wood delivery depends not only on primary productivity, but also on people's consumption rates and location relative to a forest stand (Ghillardi et al., 2007). Finally, ES value reflects the way in which peoples’ preferences for different services can be measured. Value can be expressed in economic terms (Costanza et al., 1998); the economic value of forests in supplying water for human consumption has been used to promote their management and conservation (Núñez et al., 2006). Values can also include non-tangible dimensions (Chan et al., 2012); the Purhepecha people in Michoacán, Mexico, value maize for its ceremonial, social and culinary values while industrial farmers prioritize yield and income from corn fields (Balvanera et al., 2009).

Any management decision may have positive or negative effects on different ES and lead to tradeoffs among them. For instance, management decisions tend to favor provisioning services such as food, water or wood at the expense of regulating services such as climate or water quality regulation (Bennett and Balvanera, 2007, Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2010). Assessments of the drivers that underpin management decisions as population growth, or policies that foster particular ES (Liu et al., 2007, Carpenter et al., 2009), increasingly require interdisciplinary perspectives (Nicholson et al., 2009).

Ultimately, the use of the ES concept is intended to support the development of interventions, policies or management schemes that integrate the functioning of ecosystems and the benefits they provide to societies into decision making towards sustainability (Nelson et al., 2009, Simpson and Vira, 2010, McKenzie et al., 2011). A wide range of interventions may be used to sustain ES: (i) knowledge interventions (i.e., scientific research) generate, synthesize and communicate new information, (ii) institutional and governance interventions (e.g., local rules for access to resources) address the way societies are organized to make decisions, (iii) societal and behavioral interventions (e.g., empowerment) relate to values and address societal and individual response patterns, (iv) technological interventions (e.g., best management practices) search for efficient ways to manage ecosystems and their services, and (v) market and financial interventions (e.g., markets for carbon) aim to modify decision-making through financial incentives. From all these potential interventions, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, the creation of a market and associated financial incentives to foster the maintenance of particular ES, have been broadly developed and adopted (Wunder, 2007, Engel et al., 2008, Jack et al., 2008).

Research on ES in Latin America (LA) has reflected the particularities of the region. LA encompasses areas with a large diversity of topographical and climatic conditions, and holds a large fraction of the world's unique biodiversity (Table 1). The indigenous cultures were deeply integrated with the westernized European colonizers, those from the Caribbean, and more recently by the frequent migration to the United States and Canada (Vargas Llosa, 2007). In the past two decades, the region has experienced fast economic growth as well as economic crises (Escalante et al., 2008, Guedes et al., 2009, UNEP, 2010). Improvements in human livelihoods associated with these socioeconomic trends have largely come at the expense of strong inequities in income, health, education and power, the migration of rural populations to the cities, and negative environmental impacts derived from unsustainable use of natural resources (UNEP, 2010; Table 2, Table 3). From colonial times to the present, economic policies in the Region have stimulated export-oriented foreign and national investment by maintaining or intensifying social inequalities (i.e., low wage labor) and exploiting cheap and abundant land, natural resources and agricultural products (Table 2). Although there has been some progress in the development and adoption of environmental policies (Nepstad et al., 2009), these efforts cannot counteract pressures from the driving forces of the Region's economic model such as urban expansion, increasing human populations, as well as energy and material intensive production patterns (Killeen, 2007, UNEP, 2010; Table 2, Table 3).

To assess the state of the art of ES research in LA we focused on ten LA political entities (9 countries and 1 state associated to the US) in which ES research has been ongoing: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay. Our goals were to examine the historical evolution of the study of ecosystem services in LA, provide a synthesis of the state of science, and offer recommendations for moving forward. Within this framework, we asked the following questions:

• How and when did the study of ES arise in each country?

• What is our present understanding of ES supply, delivery to societies, and social and economic values of ES?

• What is the state of the art in integrating tradeoffs among services and in using interdisciplinary perspectives?

• How has ES research been connected to policy design or management for sustainability?

For all four questions we qualitatively assessed general trends across LA and variations across nations. We then identified the key challenges that lay ahead.