The Ecosystems Approach

It is widely accepted that people obtain a range of benefits from the natural environment. However, decision making often fails to take account of the full value of natural capital. As a result, it is difficult to maintain the integrity of the natural resource base and secure a sustainable future. To overcome these problems it has been proposed that a more broadly-based, more cross-cutting and more integrated style of decision making is required. Efforts in this direction are being supported through the perspective of an ‘ecosystems approach’. An ecosystems approach involves a place-based integrated sustainability assessment that is focused on the role an ecosystem plays in sustainable development.

Although the ecosystems approach is still evolving, in essence it involves trying to identify the multiple benefits that ecosystems can provide to people, assessing the value of these benefits and reflecting these values in decision making processes. In order to identify a full set of benefits and beneficiaries and to provide for values to be revealed and negotiated, an ecosystems approach is usually organised as a participatory process of knowledge brokerage and social learning involving stakeholders, scientists and decision makers.

In principle, the ecosystems approach can give a richer set of information to planners, policy advisers and decision makers and can help generate new ideas about how to manage ecosystems and attract investment into ecological restoration projects. These issues are particularly important given the prospect of climate change and the need to understand and meet our future requirements in terms of energy, food and resource security.

The EMBED project will therefore investigate whether and how an ecosystems approach can help transform the basis and context for decision making. It will gather evidence about those attributes of an ecosystems approach that have a positive influence on decision making, and explore how these might be mainstreamed. This will be done by evaluating, individually and as a set, four demonstrator projects that are taking an ecosystems approach and which are expected to influence societal choices in the management of environmental resources. The demonstrator projects provide a diverse range of applications that can be used to better understand the barriers and opportunities for using an ecosystems approach in decision making. They will also provide examples of best practice that can demonstrate how the approach can be used most effectively.

In this way the EMBED project will help policy and decision makers to maintain the integrity of our natural capital and maximise the contribution natural capital makes to sustainable development.