Assumptions in ecosystem service assessments: Increasing transparency for conservation
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Assumptions in ecosystem service assessments: Increasing transparency for conservation Matthias Schro¨ter , Emilie Crouzat, Lisanne Ho¨lting, Julian Massenberg, Julian Rode, Mario Hanisch, Nadja Kabisch, Julia Palliwoda, Jo¨rg A. Priess, Ralf Seppelt, Michael Beckmann
Received: 29 April 2020 / Revised: 10 July 2020 / Accepted: 5 August 2020
Abstract Conservation efforts are increasingly supported by ecosystem service assessments. These assessments depend on complex multi-disciplinary methods, and rely on a number of assumptions which reduce complexity. If assumptions are ambiguous or inadequate, misconceptions and misinterpretations may arise when interpreting results of assessments. An interdisciplinary understanding of assumptions in ecosystem service science is needed to provide consistent conservation recommendations. Here, we synthesise and elaborate on 12 prevalent types of assumptions in ecosystem service assessments. These comprise conceptual and ethical foundations of the ecosystem service concept, assumptions on data collection, indication, mapping, and modelling, on socioeconomic valuation and value aggregation, as well as about using assessment results for decision-making. We recommend future assessments to increase transparency about assumptions, and to test and validate them and their potential consequences on assessment reliability. This will support the taking up of assessment results in conservation science, policy and practice. Keywords Assessment Decision-making Ecosystem services Environmental ethics Mapping Valuation
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01379-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
WHAT ARE ASSUMPTIONS IN ECOSYSTEM SERVICE ASSESSMENTS? Ecosystem services (ES) have become an important concept to justify and underpin conservation efforts. ES have been acknowledged as a crucial conservation framework, with applications for protected areas and management of used landscapes (e.g. Kremen and Merenlender 2018). ES assessments, i.e. measurements, quantifications or valuations of ES, have seen remarkable methodological advances in recent years and frequently employ multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary methods that rely on a series of assumptions. While assumptions are made in many fields of research, the interdisciplinary nature of ES assessments leads to assumptions being made on different levels: from philosophical reasoning and normative preconceptions to disciplinary methods. Moreover, assumptions are discipline-specific and are based on diverse research paradigms and their philosophical foundations. Thereby, it becomes challenging to account for all assumptions made in an ES assessment. While methodological debates on the appropriateness of assumptions have taken place within disciplines (e.g. economics, Wegner and Pascual 2011), an overview of the variety of assumptions made in ES assessments as well as their potential consequences for conservation is
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