Abstract
This paper presents a systematic review of biodiversity/ecosystem services scenario exercises from the Asia–Pacific region. From the limited scholarly literature available, 61 scenario exercises were examined to explore their typology and multiple scenario attributes, including geographic distribution, consideration for influential drivers, choices of ecosystem services, number of alternative futures and temporal horizons for scenario deployment. To analyze the nature and tendency of 204 regional scenario narratives, collated from the 61 regional/sub-regional scenario studies, we used the Global Scenario Group (GSG) archetypes to synthesize diverse, contrasting scenario assumptions. A further attempt was made to identify regional focuses in relation to the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) through rigorous, qualitative screening of scenario narratives. Our observation suggests that, so far, spatially explicit, exploratory scenarios dominate regional ecosystem services/biodiversity scenario research, with emphasis on the assessment of likely trades-offs in food-provisioning ecosystem services. The archetype analysis further indicated that the regional/sub-regional scenarios mostly correspond to the market force, policy reform and eco-communalism pathways of the GSG archetypes, while population growth, climate change, agricultural expansion and urbanization remain the dominant regional drivers of change. With respect to integration of SDGs, environmental targets listed under SDGs 11 to 15, in addition to the first three SDGs (i.e. SDGs 1, 2 and 3), remain well-integrated within the regional/sub-regional scenario narratives, albeit with variations across the sub-regions. The review concludes with a number of recommendations for future biodiversity/scenario research in the Asia–Pacific, which should aim to put emphasis on development of short-term, normative, participatory scenarios and incorporation for cultural services, especially those with non-material benefits.
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Notes
IPBES (2016) classified scenarios into four broad classes, namely ‘exploratory scenarios’, ‘target-seeking scenarios’, ‘policy-screening scenarios’ and ‘retroactive policy evaluation scenarios’.
See http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ for full list of 17 SDGs and 169 targets.
Including the ‘online first’ articles.
Geographical boundary of the five sub-regions was adopted from IPBES. See https://www.ipbes.net/deliverables/2b-asia–pacific.
Here, quantitative scenarios refer the specific scenarios that quantified the relationship between different scenario assumptions and their critical consequences on biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Direct drivers, including both natural and anthropogenic, affect ecosystems directly (Díaz et al. 2015). This consists all the natural drivers beyond human control and anthropogenic drivers that directly trigger changes in ecosystem services. Indirect drivers are those that do not affect nature directly, but influence ecosystems through long-standing, cascading effect. For instance, IPBES defined climate change, pollution, different types of land use change, invasive alien species, etc. as direct driver. Contrarily, economic, population growth, etc. are considered as indirect driver. For more details, see https://www.ipbes.net/glossary/driver.
The remaining one study depicts scenario exercise from the entire regional perspective and hence was not reflected in this list as well as in the sub-regional analysis.
Interested readers can refer to the study of Small et al. 2017 for diverse conceptualization and methods for evaluating cultural/non-material ecosystem services.
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Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Environmental Research and Technology Development Fund (S-15, Predicting and Assessing Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services (PANCES)) of the Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, and by the Research Institute for Humanities and Nature (RIHN) Project No. 14200103. The authors would also like to thank colleagues from the IPBES-Asia Pacific Regional Assessment and the Technical Support Unit (TSU) for Asia–Pacific Regional Assessment Report (2015–2018). In addition, the authors are grateful to Ms. Emma Fushimi from Institute for Global Environmental Strategies for editing this manuscript.
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Disclaimer The paper is based on the outcome of a review exercise conducted by the authors for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Asia–Pacific regional assessment report (2015–2018). The summary for policy makers (SPM) of this report is available at https://www.ipbes.net/assessment-reports/asia–pacific.
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DasGupta, R., Hashimoto, S. & Gundimeda, H. Biodiversity/ecosystem services scenario exercises from the Asia–Pacific: typology, archetypes and implications for sustainable development goals (SDGs). Sustain Sci 14, 241–257 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0647-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0647-1