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Using Ecosystem Services in Community-Based Landscape Planning: Science is Not Ready to Deliver

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Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture

Abstract

Community-based landscape governance is considered as conditional to achieving sustainable landscape. I consider landscape governance from the point of view of adapting landscapes to create value out of ecosystem services, using the social–ecological system model as a theoretical framework. I advocate the use of the term landscape services because it can serve as a common ground between science and local communities, and between scientists from different disciplines. Six principles for sustainable landscape change are presented, which can be developed as a checklist in planning, and as requirements to scientific methods. From the current literature it is obvious that ecosystem service research does not provide the type of science that is required to support sustainable, community-based landscape planning. Research is mainly science driven, focussed on assessments at large spatial scale, and with policy users in mind. Active involvement of local stakeholders is scarce. There is a strong demand for approaches that are able to involve local governance networks and move the ecosystem services research out of the static mapping and evaluation approaches towards dynamic systems thinking. The chapter ends with a research agenda.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter was inspired by many discussions with colleagues and on the ground applications in research led by Alterra. I thank Eveliene Steingröver, Sabine van Rooij, Carla Grashof, Severine van Bommel, JolandeTermorshuizen, Willemien Geertsema, Florence van den Bosch and many others. The EU-financed Interreg project GIFT-T! has financially contributed to the preparation of this chapter.

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  1. Land Use Planning Chair Group and Nature and Society Group, Wageningen University and ALTERRA, Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 36708, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Paul Opdam

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  1. Res. Center for Eco-Environmental Sci., Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, People's Republic

    Bojie Fu

  2. University of Nevada, Desert Research Institute University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

    K. Bruce Jones

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Opdam, P. (2013). Using Ecosystem Services in Community-Based Landscape Planning: Science is Not Ready to Deliver. In: Fu, B., Jones, K. (eds) Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6530-6_5

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