Energy Systems and Ecosystem Services; a emerging research agenda

1. Energy Systems and Ecosystem Services; a emerging research agenda Dan van der Horst School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham 25/02/2013

2. structure • Ecosystem Services – the basics • My research on land use change (LUC) • Reflections on natural resource management in the 21st century • My research on low carbon communities • Emerging research agenda; Ecosystem Based Development

3. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) • Launched in 2000 by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annand, who stated that “there has never been a comprehensive global assessment of the world’s major ecosystems”. • “MEA is designed to provide decision-makers with information to manage ecosystems in a more sustainable manner that will maintain both biodiversity and the ecosystem services that are essential to human well-being (HWB)”.

4. Key definitions Ecosystem. An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and microorganism communities and the nonliving environment interacting as a functional unit. Humans are an integral part of ecosystems. Ecosystems vary enormously in size; a temporary pond in a tree hollow and an ocean basin can both be ecosystems. Ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as regulation of floods, drought, land degradation, and disease; supporting services such as soil formation and nutrient cycling; and cultural services such as recreational, spiritual, religious and other nonmaterial benefits. Well-being. Human well-being has multiple constituents, including basic material for a good life, freedom and choice, health, good social relations, and security. Wellbeing is at the opposite end of a continuum from poverty, which has been defined as a “pronounced deprivation in well-being.” The constituents of well-being, as experienced and perceived by people, are situation-dependent, reflecting local geography, culture, and ecological circumstances.

5. MEA background • Involvement of governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists • An interdisciplinary project, involving thousands of scientists from across the world • Aimed to provide an integrated assessment of the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to analyze options available to enhance the conservation of ecosystems and their contributions to meeting human needs. • Should help to inform the implementation of UN conventions such as The Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Migratory Species, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. • It should also help to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and to carry out the Plan of Implementation of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. • Supposed to identify areas of broad scientific agreement and also point to areas of continuing scientific debate.

6. MEA: 5 overarching research questions • Conditions & trends to date? • Likely future changes? • What we can do to enhance well-being & ES+HWB? • What do and don’t we know about ES+HWB and how do we deal with such uncertainties in our policies? • What tools and methods do we have/need to assess ES+HWB, and policies to protect or enhance these

7. About the MEA: conditions & trends to date • How do ecosystems contribute to human well-being? • How have ecosystems changed and how has this increased or reduced their capacity to contribute to human well-being? • Thresholds, regime shifts, irreversible changes? • Critical factors affecting the observed changes? • Costs, benefits and risks associated with observed changes and how are these distributed over space and over sectors of society?

9. Provisioning services (‘use values’) are characterised by public accessibility and by the availability of substitute resources. For example, the recreational use value of a woodland depends, inter alia, on how many people can access that woodland and how many other woodlands [substitute sites] are available to these people. • Cultural services (‘non-use values’) also relate to accessibility and substitute sites but more in a conceptual rather than a literal sense as many examples of non-use values, particularly those ones that do not require physical access, are ‘non-exclusive’ and ‘non-rival’. In other words, their enjoyment by one person does not necessarily limit or diminish another person’s ability to access and enjoy this service through exclusion or consumptive diminishment. • Regulating services (‘protection values’) refer to indirect (conservation) use values related to the ability of ecosystems to mitigate the impacts of antropogenic emissions or natural phenomena.

10. EcosystemService ‘cascade’ (Haines-Young & Potschin, 2009)

11. Assessment methods are complementary & co-dependent Functional or biophysical assessment; Social assessment; Valuation

12. Back to my own research…(on Land Use Change)

13. Generic model for assessing LUC drivers, patterns and processes Theory Drivers For LUC (market, Policy, CC…) Fieldwork to understand process behind patterns Patterns found Pattern Analysis LUC data Methods used: - Pattern analysis: GIS, RS, Stats - Fieldwork: participant observation, div qual methods, questionnaires & biophysical surveys/sampling

14. Case study of windfarm approval patterns (van der Horst & Toke, 2010) Theory (env. justice; social capital) Wind Energy policy Wind farms Approved/ rejected Patterns found Pattern analysis

15. Case study on farmer uptake of a PES scheme (van der Horst, 2011) Theory (Innovation diffusion as a spatio-temporal process) Data of Farmers joining ‘ESA’ PES scheme Patterns found Pattern analysis Cummulative uptake over time

16. Case study of village ecology & jatrophacurcas (in progress) Theory/Hypothesis (speculation;Marx?) Drivers For LUC (historic jatropha ‘hype’) Fieldwork (ground truthing) village Tree cover (RS) Patterns found Pattern analysis

17. Reflections 1Human – nature relationship • ‘unspoiled’ nature is a human construct • We are not external to nature • we are shaping our ecosystem; and this changed ecosystem is shaping us (health, wellbeing..). This is a feedback loop • We should shape our ecosystem in a smarter way, creating a positive feedback loop.

18. Reflections 2Technology & ecology • Technology allowed us to become the most invasive of all species, occupying all ecosystems. • From crude technology to Biomimicry. • From technology to extract ES and protect these against competition… • To technology to restore lost ES (e.g. geo-engineering)

19. Reflections 3Geological irony • We mine fossil fuels (accumulated ecosystem services) • And that energy gives us the power to act as a geological force; Anthropocene. • Now we are running low on (cheap & clean[ish]) fossil fuels • Now we need to invest in infrastructure to adapt to climate change which we have created (requires more energy..)

20. Why do we create externalities? • (assuming that we are not bad people; assuming that we are not very poor) • Bad impact is in a place far away • Bad impact is in a time far away • Bad impact is diffuse • Bad impact has multiple causes • Bad impact is (otherwise) invisible Globalisation as externalisation through space

21. Wrong national boundaries, sectoral boundaries, zoning, property regime • Redraw boundaries (national, sectoral) through institutional reform • Redraw property relations through commodification of nature • Change Agents: ICT revolution (making divisible what is invisible), shifts in economic landscape, public opinion?

22. Principles of Adaptive Management? • Build resilience in infrastructure [redundancy (back-up); contingency (plan B); recovery] • Increase storage • Diversify supplies • Avoid new ‘bad’ lock-in (high energy/dirty energy) • No blanket approach; Find/use local synergies • Shorter supply-demand feedback loops • Soft measures 1: reduce demand • Soft measures 2: dev./support coping strategies • Accept experiments; learning by doing • Shared knowledge, decisions, learning

23. Cultural lock-in from our industrial past; the pastoral myth ‘[T]he open countryside space is portrayed as a space of consumption in which ramblers walk – and walk freely – experiencing peace and quiet and spectacular scenery. The land’s value lies not in its productive activity, but as an escape for city-dwellers, as somewhere to reconnect with nature, and to inspire art, literature and music’ (Woods, 2003, p 285).

24. Back to my own research again(on low carbon communities)

25. Renewable Energy development as a form of smart (re)localisation • Linking production and consumption (no sustainable consumption without sustainable production) • Linking production to social impacts (impacts of the production process; impacts of energy services provided) • Linking people and organisations through a supply chain or a grid (power relations shift with distance, connectivity, directionality) • Community building?

26. Community as a focus for collective action in RE deployment • Broad research area since Tonnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. • To what extent can socio-technical transition to a low carbon society be understood in terms of (lack of) collective or community action? • What examples/types of low carbon munities are there? • What collective resources are being mobilised? • How are these being mobilised? (process?) • Giving these observations, what can we expect for the future? (‘mainstreaming’?)

27. Locating ‘low carbon’ communities Island community Intentional community place scale Virtual community Interest (culture, value etc) ‘bowling alone’?

28. Community (trans)formation & engagement with RE Community of place Westray? e.g. eco-village e.g. threat to back-yard (greentrified?) Community of practice Community of interest Innovation-diffusion, Capacity building e.g. consumer Co-ops; ‘urban’ Wind co-ops e.g. veggie vans; Solar guerrillas; off-gridders Virtual Community

29. Intentional green community: Findhorn

30. Left: Selling green electricityBelow: Selling green technology (solar water heaters)

31. But we also have ‘depleted communities’ “communities where the economy is in decline and the resources of the area, according to profit-seeking capital, are ‘used up’. However, depleted communities are more than simply locations that lack growth mechanisms; they are also areas to which people retain an attachment. A depleted community, therefore, continues to exist as a social entity because it is shaped by positive social forces as well as by negative economic forces. While the economic signals are for people to move, the ties to community, the emotional bonds and the social benefits of living there create a powerful resistance to leaving. A depleted community, therefore, maintains a strong and active network of social relations.” (Johnstone and Lionais, 2004, p. 217) Ex-mining (Barnsley, Kirklees) - Remote rural (Westray, Unst)

32. (Island) Westray • Biodiesel from waste cooking oil • Electric car (converted), charged by a wind turbine • Wind to heat (kirk, youth centre, care centre) • GSHP (now standard for new houses) • Farm digester • Community wind farm • Biomass boiler for cardboard • Aim: carbon neutral by 2012

33. Capitalist production develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer (Marx) inputs Slurry Grass Paper Crab shells Concept of ‘Shared Value’ (Michael Porter) outputs Domestic heat Electricity for grid Fertiliser for land Digester Outcomes: Lower heating bills Income for farmers, income for biogas company Drink water quality improvement Local & sustainable waste disposal Cost avoidance for local fish processing plant Reduced GHG emissions

34. Towards Ecosystem Based Development? • Extends from ecosystem based management • Work with nature (not develop OR conserve) • Work ‘to scale’ (‘disecologies of scale’) • Create ‘shared value’ (more than just avoiding externalities) • See human activities and technologies as part of nature (anthropocene, biomimicry…) • Challenging paradigms: Positive lock-in; transaction benefits; value of redundancy; learning-from-failure as a public good