This document discusses governance of ecosystem services and transforming the ecosystem services concept into an explicit management tool. It outlines that management of complex environments requires adaptive management beyond traditional command and control methods. This requires good socio-cultural valuation and inclusion of all significant stakeholders in decision making. Effective management plans also require robust monitoring systems. The document argues that mix of demand-side identification of stakeholders is needed, and different ways to understand their relationships and weight their relevance. It provides an example of managing dunes in the Barcelona metropolitan area.

1. Governance of ecosystem services: how to
transform the ES concept in an explicit
management tool
A very first draft of a blueprint protocol for ES management by
Jose Lascurain (Barcelona) and to be revised by OPERAs team
17 November 2016

2. To engage
stakeholders
Bridging gaps
between
administrations and
stakeholders
To find better
decision-making
circuits.
To optimize
efficiency.
To improve
innovation
To create more efficient strategies.
The ecosystem services concept as an explicit management tool
Useful for decision making and management in areas like urban planning,
natural park management, ….

3. To manage ES is to manage complex environments that
need visions going beyond command and control methods.
This is why there is a need of adaptive management systems

4. To get a good management plan there is a need of a good
socio-cultural valuation, and to identify all significate
stakeholders and, so to weight their relevance to include
them on the decision making process.

5. This virtuous cycle advances with knowledge, and
so, there is a need of good monitoring system. The
efficiency and effectiveness of the process will set the
pace of the advancement of the process

6. Management plans that are only conceived from the
“command and control” concept will not work.
The same when the monitoring system is ill conceived.

7. Lots of aspects genuinely born from the ES concept that are
useful when managing complex environments

8. Different ways to identify stakeholders

9. Why not a mix from the demand side?
First get the information and second classify

10. Social-media
listening can be a
very useful method

11. Different ways to understand their relationships

12. Not only to find all
them, but also for
early warning of
troubles when
competing moral
orders

13. So map, describe and then draw the flows between them

14. Different ways to weight their relevance

16. High levels of saliency (or
social media visibility) is not
always the best indicator.

18. And the obvious need to assess the
monitoring system.
There are objective ways to say
if it is evidence-based or not.
And not so difficult to determine
when a second opinion or a
validation system is needed.
And all this with transparency,
and open standards!

19. The Barcelona metropolitan
dunes case study
Different demand of ES between
beaches

20. The economic price of housing properties is very high

21. Dunes
disappeared
long ago

22. Wind no more constructing
dunes but keeping its erosive
potential

23. This is because the seasonality of the “constructor” wind

24. So we have developed a method
of dune construction mimicking
natural processes

25. The Barcelona Metropolitan Area is responsible
of providing clean sand and good services to
more than 7.000.000 yearly visitors

26. But the most relevant factor and stakeholder is another

27. With an environmental assessment based on an ill
conceived model

28. All the metropolitan beaches
affected.
1/3 of them by a novel
process triggered by beach
slope inversion.
A very risky factor as the
effect of sea level rise will be
non linear.

29. So we conceived a
model relying on the
emerged sand system

30. With a very precise
model

31. http://maps.croma.org.es/geoserver/www/cr004_
visor-ampliat.html
With a Web Map service

32. Where people can mix layers and understand what happens

33. The stakeholders

35. The monitoring research centre
recognizes the failure of the process,
involving around 1.000.000 € cost each
year moving 100.000m3 of sand

38. And with other opportunities