Ecosystem Services, Governance, and Stakeholder Participation: an Introduction

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES, GOVERNANCE, AND STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION: AN INTRODUCTION The ecosystem services approach has gained popularity, and novel incentive-based ecosystem conservation strategies are increasingly being used. This calls for the reassessment and transformation of conceptual-theoretical, natural resource management, and governance approaches to conservation. In the past, conservation efforts focused on distinct components of ecosystems without regard for long-term human well-being. Natural resource management in turn sought to control nature to harvest products for direct consumption or for sale at markets. However, this singular focus on management ignored that ecosystems are complex, dynamic, adaptive systems with nonlinear feedback and thresholds (Costanza 2008) and are tightly interlinked with human systems (Menzel and Teng 2010).