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Using the ecosystem services concept to analyse stakeholder involvement in wetland management

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Abstract

Wetland management usually involves multiple stakeholders. This paper describes how the use of the ecosystem services (ES) concept can help to identify the main stakeholders associated with wetland conservation, using the Hula Wetland in the Sea of Galilee’s watershed as a case study. We conducted a stakeholder analysis based on semi-structured interviews. We focused on the management of two semi-natural areas within the larger Hula Wetland area (Hula Nature Reserve and Agamon), in which different management regimes are used and which provide different bundles of ES to different stakeholders. Using the ES concept in the stakeholder analysis, we were able to present the Hula Wetland management in a comprehensive manner. The approach also revealed a lack of coordination between the managing organisations which might lead to competition favouring cultural services (in particular tourism) at the expense of habitat services (i.e. biodiversity conservation) in the future. To test our method we also conducted a stakeholder analysis in the Camargue Wetland in France. The two wetlands have similar characteristics but are embedded in different institutional contexts. The Camargue Regional Park has a multi-stakeholder platform which could serve as an example for the Hula Wetland to improve its management and lead to better coordination and complementarity of ES provided by the two sub-sites. Our study showed that applying the ES concept helps to quickly identify relevant stakeholders and analyse wetland management in a more holistic way and to point towards sustainable solutions for conflicting stakeholder interests.

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Notes

  1. Lake Kinneret is the Israeli name for Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberias.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support was gratefully received from the Smaller Winnikow Fellowship Fund for Environmental Research, the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, and the French Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research. The authors thank Rosi Siber and Maryse Thollon for their help with preparing the GIS maps of the Hula and Camargue, respectively. We also thank Ivana Logar, Idan Barnea and Zev Labinger for their useful comments. We thank all interviewed stakeholders for the invaluable information that they shared with us. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham & Tamar Dayan

  2. SIAM Department, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), P.O. Box 611, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham

  3. Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Rudolf de Groot

  4. Department of Monitoring, Evaluation and Wetland Policy, La Tour du Valat, Le Sambuc, 13200, Arles, France

    Coralie Beltrame

  5. CERSP UMR 7204, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 55 rue Buffon, 75005, Paris, France

    Fanny Guillet

  6. Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Eran Feitelson

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  1. Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham
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  2. Tamar Dayan
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Correspondence to Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham.

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Cohen-Shacham, E., Dayan, T., de Groot, R. et al. Using the ecosystem services concept to analyse stakeholder involvement in wetland management. Wetlands Ecol Manage 23, 241–256 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-014-9375-1

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