Brendan Fisher Talks About Ecosystem Services
Fast Breaking Commentary, October 2010
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Article: Defining and classifying ecosystem services for decision making
Authors: Fisher, B;Turner, RK;Morling,
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Brendan Fisher talks with ScienceWatch.com and answers a few questions about this month's Fast Breaking Paper paper in the field of Economics & Business.
Why do you think your paper is highly
cited?
The concept of ecosystem services has become a rapidly increasing and important area of research. The concept inherently links issues about the functioning of ecosystems to the material and emotional well-being of humanity. In doing so it brings together several disciplines and current hot topic issues such as biodiversity loss, food security, poverty, climate change, as well as the role economics can play in making decisions for a more sustainable and equitable future.
Does it describe a new discovery, methodology, or
synthesis of knowledge?
Our paper is part synthesis, part methodology. In dealing with such a multidisciplinary topic, an earlier stumbling block for operationalizing ecosystem service research was simply getting scientists with different training and backgrounds to communicate better, as well as understand the methods with which other disciplines attack problems.
"Understanding these spatial and temporal dynamics in the context of a rapidly changing regional and global social systems, is one of the next steps where a lot of work is currently going on."
Our paper tries to help in overcoming this stumbling block by both reviewing some of the earlier and foundational work and also by highlighting some of the simpler ways to operationalize ecosystem service research.
How did you become involved in this research, and
how would you describe the particular challenges, setbacks, and
successes that you've encountered along the way?
As someone interested in both human welfare and the conservation of species and ecosystems at large, ecosystem services research is certainly an intriguing space to work. I had the opportunity to work on a project trying to understand the links between land use, biodiversity, and poverty in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania—Valuing the Arc.
This project is hopefully on the forefront of delivering robust results on linking socio-economic models with ecological models in order to understand the welfare impacts across the range of stakeholders who are affected by both conservation and conversion of natural habitats.
A huge challenge here is understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of such a complex system. For example, how does the value of carbon storage, water regulation, and products extracted from natural forests change over space and time? Under different futures with different demands, pressures, and markets?
Where do you see your research leading in the
future?
Understanding these spatial and temporal dynamics in the context of rapidly changing regional and global social systems is one of the next steps where a lot of work is currently heading. I also think a key area of research for the future is linking mechanisms created to meet typically disparate policy goals.
For example, how can mechanisms created to deal with climate change be
implemented to deal with linked problems such as rural poverty, food
insecurity, and biodiversity protection? There has been some good
large-scale work on these issues, but to be really effective we need
research and projects that can be undertaken or laid out at scales relevant
to local decision makers, and local economic conditions.
Brendan Fisher
Postdoctoral Fellow, Program in Science, Technology and
Environmental Policy
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ, USA
KEYWORDS: Ecosystem services; Ecosystem benefits; Human welfare; Environmental decision making; Millennium Assessment, RESEARCH NEEDS; VALUATION; CLASSIFICATION; BIODIVERSITY; STABILITY; RESILIENCE; RESISTANCE; DIVERSITY; ECOLOGY; POVERTY.