Ecosystem services governance in the Wienerwald region

The society benefits in a number of ways from services (demand) provided by nature such as clean water, a pleasant landscape for recreation, food, or fuels. Many of these so-called Ecosystem services (ESS) are impacted by human action such as agricultural land use or infrastructure development. Societies often regulate these actions and therefore the supply of ESS e.g. by introducing agri-environmental policies or spatial planning. The citizen science project ServeToPe tests how the demand for ESS and its supply by nature can be better quantified. This shall inform more sustainable management measures such as better land use decisions or better policies that serve the needs of the people. ServeToPe is based on the ongoing BiodivERsA project SALBES (Scenarios for Agricultural Landscapes` Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; www.salbes.eu). It is located in the Biosphere Reserve Wienerwald and plans to answer the following major research questions: 1.What is the current demand for ESS and how does the Wienerwald region contribute to this demand? 2.What does good management of ESS mean? How can policies contribute to align demand for ESS and its supply? We call this good governance from a citizens perspective? ServeToPe takes several steps to answer these questions. It develops a list of ESS that are potentially important to the society. It quantifies the need (demand) of these ESS and compares it to the mainly regional supply. For example, it will show whether the demand for certain recreational activities matches with the supply of recreational areas and the environmental quality of these areas. Thereby, it will prove whether there are conflicts between different demands. Recreational activities may for example impact the provision of agricultural products. Our analysis will reveal mismatches that can be tackled with better management. A number of good practice policy measures shall result as a major outcome of the project. An example would be regional and spatially planned nature conservation activities. Citizens will be important research partners in ServToPe. They will help to reveal peoples needs (demand) and will support the evaluation of management measures and policies to increase supply. In case of conflicts between the demand of ESS (e.g. recreation activities vs. food production), the role of citizens in co-designing such measures and policies is particularly important.

No additional funding sources recorded.