User:Siperez/Ecosystem management

Ecosystem management is an approach to ecosystem maintenance and restoration that aims to promote the long-term sustainability of ecosystem functioning. This combines the socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs by ensuring the persistence of ecosystem services. Building upon traditional natural resource management approaches, ecosystem management is a holistic, adaptive method for evaluating and achieving ecosystem resilience and sustainability.

Formulations
The term “ecosystem management” was formalized in 1992 by F. Dale Robertson, who was at that time the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Robertson stated, “By ecosystem management, we mean an ecological approach… [that] must blend the needs of people and environmental values in such a way that the National Forests and Grasslands represent diverse, healthy, productive and sustainable ecosystems.” A variety of additional definitions of ecosystem management exist, although other definitions of this concept are typically vague.

Pre-Industrialization
Sustainable ecosystem management approaches have been used by societies throughout human history. Prior to colonization, Indigenous cultures often sustainably managed their natural resources through intergenerational Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). In this approach, cultures acquired knowledge of their environment over time and this information is passed on to future generations through cultural customs, including folklore, religion, and taboos. Traditional management strategies vary by region include, and examples include the burning of the longleaf pine ecosystem by Native Americans in what is today the southeastern United States; the ban of seabird guano harvest during the breeding season by the Inca; the sustainable harvest practices of glaucous-winged gull eggs by the Huna Tlingit ; and the Maya milpa intercropping approach, which is still used today.

Post-Industrialization
In industrialized Western society, ecosystems have been managed primarily to maximize yields of a particular natural resource. This method to managing ecosystems can be seen by the U.S. Forest Service's shift away from sustaining ecosystem health and toward maximizing timber production to support residential development following World War II. Further, underlying traditional natural resource management is the view that each ecosystem has a single equilibrium and minimizing variation around this equilibrium results in more dependable maximal yields of natural resources. For example, this perspective informed the long-held belief in forest fire suppression in the United States, which has driven a decline in populations of fire-tolerant species as well as fuel buildup, leading to higher intensity fires. Additionally, traditional approaches to managing natural systems tended to be site- and species-specific, rather than considering all components of an ecosystem collectively; employ a “command and control” approach; and exclude stakeholders from management decisions.

The latter half of the 20th century saw a paradigm shift in how ecosystems were viewed, with a growing appreciation for the importance of disturbance and for the intrinsic link between natural resources and overall ecosystem health. Simultaneously, there was acknowledgement of the reliance of society on ecosystem services, beyond provisioning goods, and of the inextricable role human-environment interactions play in ecosystems. In sum, ecosystems were increasingly seen as complex systems, shaped by non-linear processes, and thus, they could not be managed to achieve a single, predictable outcome. As a result of these complexities and often unforeseeable feedbacks from management strategies, DeFries and Nagendra deem ecosystem management to be a “wicked problem”. Thus, the outcome of traditional natural resource management's "evolution" over the course of the 20th century is ecosystem management, which explicitly recognizes that technical and scientific knowledge, though necessary in all approaches to natural resource management, are insufficient alone.

Stakeholders
Stakeholders are individuals or groups who are affected by or have an interest in management decisions and actions. Stakeholders may also have power to influence the goals, policies, and outcomes of ecosystem management. Ecosystem management stakeholders fall into the following groups based on their diverse concerns:


 * 1) Stakeholders whose lives are directly tied to the ecosystem (e.g., members of local community)
 * 2) Stakeholders who are not directly not impacted, but have an interest in the ecosystem or its ecosystem services (e.g., NGOs, recreational groups)
 * 3) Stakeholders concerned with the decision-making processes (e.g., environmental advocacy groups)
 * 4) Stakeholders funding management plans (e.g., taxpayers, funding agencies)
 * 5) Stakeholders representing public interest (e.g., public officials)

Strategies to stakeholder participation
The complexity of ecosystem management decisions, ranging from local to international scales, requires the participation of stakeholders with diverse understandings, perceptions, and values of ecosystems and their services. Due to these complexities, effective ecosystem management is flexible and develops mutual trust around issues of common interest, with the objective of creating mutually beneficial partnerships. Key attributes of successful participatory ecosystem management efforts have been identified:


 * Stakeholder involvement is inclusive, equitable, and focused on trust-building and empowerment.
 * Stakeholders are engaged early on and involvement continues beyond decision and into management.
 * Stakeholder analysis is performed to ensure parties are appropriately represented. This involves determining the stakeholders and their interest in the management issue; assigning stakeholders to categories based on their interest in and influence on the issue; and evaluating relationships between stakeholders.
 * Stakeholders agree upon the aims of the participatory process from its beginning, and the means and extent of stakeholder participation is case-specific.
 * Stakeholder participation is conducted through skilled facilitation.
 * Social, economic, and ecological goals are equally weighed, and stakeholders are actively involved in decision making, determined through collective consensus.
 * Stakeholders continually monitor management plan’s effectiveness.
 * Multidisciplinary data are collected, reflecting multidisciplinary priorities, and decisions are informed by both local and scientific knowledge.
 * Economic incentives are provided to parties responsible for implementing management plans.
 * To ensure long-term stakeholder involvement, participation is institutionalized.

Examples of stakeholder participation in ecosystem management
Malpai Borderland management: In the early 1990s, there was ongoing conflict between the ranching and environmentalist communities in the Malpai Borderlands. The former group was concerned about sustaining their livelihoods, while the latter was concerned about the environmental impacts of livestock grazing. The groups found common ground around conserving and restoring rangeland, and diverse stakeholders, including ranchers, environmental groups, scientists, and government agencies, were engaged in management discussions. In 1994, the rancher-led Malpai Borderlands Group was created to collaboratively pursue the goals of ecosystem protection, management, and restoration.

Helge å River & Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve: In the 1980s, local government agencies and environmental groups noted declines in the health of the Helge å River ecosystem, including eutrophication, bird population declines, and deterioration of flooded meadows areas. There was concern that the Helge å, a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, faced an imminent tipping point. In 1989, led by a municipal organization, a collaborative management strategy was adopted, involving diverse stakeholders concerned with the ecological, social, and economic facets of the ecosystem. The Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve was established in 2005 to promote the preservation of the ecosystem's socio-ecological services.

Approaches to ecosystem management
Several approaches to implementing the maintenance and restoration of natural and human-modified ecosystem exist. Command and control management and traditional natural resource management are the precursors to ecosystem management, whereas adaptive management, strategic management, and landscape-level conservation represent different strategies and processes involved in implementing ecosystem management:

Command and control management
However, due to the complexities of ecological systems, command and control approaches may result in unintended consequences. For example, wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1920s to regulate elk predation. Long-term studies of wolf, elk, and tree populations since wolf reintroduction in 1995 demonstrate that reintroduction has decreased elk populations, improving tree species recruitment. Thus, by controlling ecosystems to limit natural variation and increase predictability, command and control management often leads to a decline the resilience of ecological, social, and economic systems, termed the “pathology of natural resource management”. In this “pathology”, an initially successful command and control practice drives relevant institutions to shift their focus toward control, over time obscuring the ecosystem’s natural behavior, while the economy becomes reliant on the system in its controlled state. Consequently, there has been a transition away from command and control management and increased focus on more holistic adaptive management approaches and arriving at management solutions through partnerships between stakeholders.