Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well-being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade-offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal with such trade-offs, ecological and social thresholds need to be identified to determine the acceptable solution space for conservation. Although human well-being as a concept has recently gained prominence, conservationists still lack tools to evaluate how their actions affect it in a given context. We applied the theory of human needs to conservation by building on an extensive historical application of need approaches in international development. In an innovative participatory method that included focus groups and household surveys, we evaluated how human needs are met based on locally relevant thresholds. We then established connections between human needs and ecosystem services through key-informant focus groups. We applied our method in coastal East Africa to identify households that would not be able to meet their basic needs and to uncover the role of ecosystem services in meeting these. This enabled us to identify how benefits derived from the environment were contributing to meeting basic needs and to consider potential repercussions that could arise through changes to ecosystem service provision. We suggest our approach can help conservationists and planners balance poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection and ensure conservation measures do not, at the very least, cause serious harm to individuals. We further argue it can be used as a basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation on multidimensional poverty.

Despite extensive recent research elucidating the complex relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing, little work has sought to understand how ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing and poverty alleviation. This paper adopts concepts from the “Theory of Human Need” and the “Capability Approach” to both identify the multitude of links occurring between ecosystem services and wellbeing domains, and to understand the mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing. Focus Group Discussions (N = 40) were carried out at 8 sites in Mozambique and Kenya to elicit how, why, and to what extent benefits derived from ecosystem services contribute to different wellbeing domains. Our results highlight three types of mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing, monetary, use and experience. The consideration of these mechanisms can inform the development of interventions that aim to protect or improve flows of benefits to people. Firstly, interventions that support multiple types of mechanisms will likely support multiple domains of wellbeing. Secondly, overemphasising certain types of mechanism over others could lead to negative social feedbacks, threatening the future flows of ecosystem services. Finally, the three mechanism types are interlinked and can act synergistically to enhance the capacities of individuals to convert ecosystem services to wellbeing.

This article assesses the extent to which our conceptualisation, understanding and empirical analysis of ecosystem services are inherently gendered; in other words, how they might be biased and unbalanced in terms of their appreciation of gender differences. We do this by empirically investigating how women and men are able to benefit from ecosystem services across eight communities in coastal Kenya and Mozambique. Our results highlight different dimensions of wellbeing affected by ecosystem services, and how these are valued differently by men and women. However, it is not just the division of costs and benefits of ecosystem services that is gendered. Using a heuristic device of the ‘ecosystem-wellbeing chain’ we explain patterns within our primary data as an outcome of gendered knowledge systems, gendered behavioural expectations, gendered access to resources and gendered institutions. We conclude that this holistic, gendered understanding of ecosystem services is important not just for how ecosystem services are conceptualised, but also for the development and implementation of sustainable and equitable policy and interventions.

Conservation designations such as protected areas are increasing in numbers around the world, yet it is widely reported that many are failing to reach their objectives. They are frequently promoted as opportunities for win-win outcomes that can both protect biodiversity and lead to economic benefits for affected communities. This win-win view characterizes the dominant discourse surrounding many protected areas. Although this discourse and the arguments derived from it may lead to initial acceptance of conservation interventions, this study shows how it does not necessarily result in compliance and positive attitudes toward specific protected areas. Consequently, the discourse has important implications not just for making the case for protected area implementation, but also for the likelihood of protected areas reaching their objectives. We explain how the win-win discourse influences support for marine protected areas (MPAs) and, ultimately, their success. Using data from focus groups, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews at three MPA sites in the Philippines, we identified three reasons why the win-win discourse can negatively influence prolonged support for MPAs: dashed expectations, inequity, and temptation. Through an understanding of these issues, it becomes possible to suggest improvements that can be made pre-MPA implementation that can lead to prolonged support of MPAs. A focus on less tangible and economic MPA benefits, aligning MPA goals with cultural and social values, and higher levels of transparency when describing MPA outcomes are all ways in which prolonged support of MPAs can be bolstered.

Although ecosystem services are increasingly recognized as benefits people obtain from nature, we still have a poor understanding of how they actually enhance multidimensional human well-being, and how well-being is affected by ecosystem change. We develop a concept of “ecosystem service elasticity” (ES elasticity) that describes the sensitivity of human well-being to changes in ecosystems. ES Elasticity is a result of complex social and ecological dynamics and is context dependent, individually variable, and likely to demonstrate nonlinear dynamics such as thresholds and hysteresis. We present a conceptual framework that unpacks the chain of causality from ecosystem stocks through flows, goods, value, and shares to contribute to the well-being of different people. This framework builds on previous conceptualizations, but places multidimensional well-being of different people as the final element. This ultimately disaggregated approach emphasizes how different people access benefits and how benefits match their needs or aspirations. Applying this framework to case studies of individual coastal ecosystem services in East Africa illustrates a wide range of social and ecological factors that can affect ES elasticity. For example, food web and habitat dynamics affect the sensitivity of different fisheries ecosystem services to ecological change. Meanwhile high cultural significance, or lack of alternatives enhance ES elasticity, while social mechanisms that prevent access can reduce elasticity. Mapping out how chains are interlinked illustrates how different types of value and the well-being of different people are linked to each other and to common ecological stocks. We suggest that examining chains for individual ecosystem services can suggest potential interventions aimed at poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystems while mapping out of interlinkages between chains can help to identify possible ecosystem service trade-offs and winners and losers. We discuss conceptual and practical challenges of applying such a framework and conclude on its utility as a heuristic for structuring interdisciplinary analysis of ecosystem services and human wellbeing.

Zoning is an important tool in marine spatial planning (MSP) for balancing the multi-uses of the marine environment. Whilst mainly developed conceptually and implemented in Europe and North America, marine zoning is becoming a popular tool for addressing diverse coastal marine issues in the tropics. However, we know little about how it is being implemented in practice in that context. In this study, we analysed the factors and strategies that enable and hinder the establishment of marine zoning in the low-income tropics through a case study of the 26-year history of the development of the Environmental Critical Areas Network (ECAN) in Palawan, Philippines. We employed two participatory methods: Innovation Histories to investigate how implementation barriers and opportunities change over time, and the Net-Map method to reveal the social relations and power distributions that enabled, blocked, and stalled its implementation. We found that MSP can be durable in these contexts when institutionalised in national law and adopted by local co-coordinative bodies, yet it remains an externally-driven agenda. Our study shows that the scaling up of zoning does not necessarily help resolve conflicts around marine and coastal space, and highlights the importance and influence of the political economy on MSP implementation and outcomes. We conclude that MSP's insensitivity to contextual power relations and politics raises concerns over social inclusivity, equity and justice. Moving forward, MSP implemented in the tropics needs to make conflicts, trade-offs and power distributions explicit at the outset through participatory decision-making that involves and empowers all stakeholders from the early stages of initiatives.

Environmental governance systems are expanding in size and complexity as they become more integrated and ecosystem-based. In doing so, governance transitions often involve more actors and knowingly or unknowingly alter the autonomy of actors to make decisions, and thereby the ability of the governance system to self-organise. In other words, these governance systems are becoming increasingly polycentric, moving towards an institutional structure that is reported to confer a number of benefits to social-ecological systems. This article adds to a growing body of evidence on polycentric environmental governance in practice. It adds nuance to the normative and apolitical portrayals of governance transitions in general, and transitions towards more polycentric forms of governance in particular. We analyse the relations amongst actors and historical development of four large-scale marine governance systems in Southeast Asia to understand how context, particularly power, shapes the emergence and evolution of polycentric marine governance in practice. Our data indicate that transitions towards increased polycentricity do increase diversity and autonomy of decision-making centres, which can enable more innovation or flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. However, these innovations do not always underpin sustainability and equity. Coordination mechanisms are critical for channelling the power dynamics that emerge among diverse actors towards sustainability. Yet, in these emergent, ad hoc polycentric governance arrangements such mechanisms remained nascent, ineffective, or inactive. The transaction costs involved in co-ordinating a semi-autonomous polycentric system are seemingly difficult to overcome in low- to middle-income contexts and need investment in resources and accountability mechanisms.

Securing well-being and building resilience in response to shocks are often viewed as key goals of sustainable development. Here, we present an overview of the latest published evidence, as well as the consensus of a diverse group of scientists and practitioners drawn from a structured analytical review and deliberative workshop process. We argue that resilience and well-being are related in complex ways, but in their applications in practice they are often assumed to be synergistic. Although theoretically compatible, evidence we present here shows that they may in fact work against each other. This has important implications for policy.

Interventions to address climate adaptation have been on the rise over the past decade. Intervention programmes aim to build the resilience of local communities to climate shocks, and ultimately their wellbeing by helping them to better prepare, adapt and recover. Resilience, similar to human wellbeing, is a multidimensional construct grounded in local realities and lived experiences. Yet current evaluation frameworks used in resilience programming rarely consider what resilience means in local contexts prior to implementation. This means policy designs risk failing to improve resilience of communities and creating unintended negative consequences for communities’ wellbeing. Better processes and indicators for assessing resilience are needed. This paper explores the interplay between local predictors of resilience and wellbeing to assess the validity of self-assessed indicators as part of frameworks to measure resilience. We draw from research on the Devolved Climate Finance (DCF) mechanism implemented between 2014 and 2018 in Tanzania. We find that different factors explain resilience when compared to wellbeing; while resilience is primarily influenced by relationships, wellbeing is correlated with livelihoods. This shows that incentives to improve resilience differ from those of wellbeing. Climate and development practitioners must adopt locally grounded framings for resilience and wellbeing to ensure interventions track appropriate indicators, towards positive outcomes.

The 2015-2016 El Niño had large impacts globally. The effects were not as great as anticipated in Kenya, however, leading some commentators to call it a 'non-event'. Our study uses a novel combination of participatory Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis tools, and new and existing social and biophysical data, to analyse vulnerability to, and the multidimensional impacts of, the 2015-2016 El Niño episode in southern coastal Kenya. Using a social-ecological systems lens and a unique dataset, our study reveals impacts overlooked by conventional analysis. We show how El Niño stressors interact with and amplify existing vulnerabilities to differentially impact local ecosystems and people. The policy significance of this finding is that the development of specific national capacities to deal with El Niño events is insufficient; it will be necessary to also address local vulnerabilities to everyday and recurrent stressors and shocks to build resilience to the effects of El Niño and other extremes in climate and weather.

Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well-being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade-offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal with such trade-offs, ecological and social thresholds need to be identified to determine the acceptable solution space for conservation. Although human well-being as a concept has recently gained prominence, conservationists still lack tools to evaluate how their actions affect it in a given context. We applied the theory of human needs to conservation by building on an extensive historical application of need approaches in international development. In an innovative participatory method that included focus groups and household surveys, we evaluated how human needs are met based on locally relevant thresholds. We then established connections between human needs and ecosystem services through key-informant focus groups. We applied our method in coastal East Africa to identify households that would not be able to meet their basic needs and to uncover the role of ecosystem services in meeting these. This enabled us to identify how benefits derived from the environment were contributing to meeting basic needs and to consider potential repercussions that could arise through changes to ecosystem service provision. We suggest our approach can help conservationists and planners balance poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection and ensure conservation measures do not, at the very least, cause serious harm to individuals. We further argue it can be used as a basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation on multidimensional poverty.

Despite extensive recent research elucidating the complex relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing, little work has sought to understand how ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing and poverty alleviation. This paper adopts concepts from the “Theory of Human Need” and the “Capability Approach” to both identify the multitude of links occurring between ecosystem services and wellbeing domains, and to understand the mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing. Focus Group Discussions (N = 40) were carried out at 8 sites in Mozambique and Kenya to elicit how, why, and to what extent benefits derived from ecosystem services contribute to different wellbeing domains. Our results highlight three types of mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing, monetary, use and experience. The consideration of these mechanisms can inform the development of interventions that aim to protect or improve flows of benefits to people. Firstly, interventions that support multiple types of mechanisms will likely support multiple domains of wellbeing. Secondly, overemphasising certain types of mechanism over others could lead to negative social feedbacks, threatening the future flows of ecosystem services. Finally, the three mechanism types are interlinked and can act synergistically to enhance the capacities of individuals to convert ecosystem services to wellbeing.

Non-technical summary We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature - for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty - feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these relationships can guide better interventions for sustainably improving well-being and alleviating poverty. However, more attention needs to be paid to how experience-related benefits from nature influence attitudes and actions towards the environment, and how these relationships can be reflected in more environmentally sustainable development projects. Technical summary in the broad literatures that address the linked challenge of maintaining ecosystem integrity while addressing poverty and inequality, there is still a need to investigate how linkages and feedbacks between ecosystem services and well-being can be taken into account to ensure environmental sustainability and improved livelihoods. We present a conceptual model towards a dynamic and reciprocal understanding of the feedbacks between human well-being and ecosystems. The conceptual model highlights three mechanisms through which people derive benefits from ecosystems (use, money and experience), and illustrates how these benefits can affect values, attitudes and actions towards ecosystems. Institutions and agency determine access to and distribution of benefits and costs, and also present barriers or enabling factors for individual or collective action. The conceptual model synthesises insights from existing but mostly separate bodies of literature on well-being and the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, and reveals gaps and areas for future research. Two case studies illustrate how recognizing the full feedback loop between how ecosystems support human well-being and how people behave towards those ecosystems, as well as intervention points within the loop, can guide better action for sustainable poverty alleviation and stewardship of the biosphere.

This article assesses the extent to which our conceptualisation, understanding and empirical analysis of ecosystem services are inherently gendered; in other words, how they might be biased and unbalanced in terms of their appreciation of gender differences. We do this by empirically investigating how women and men are able to benefit from ecosystem services across eight communities in coastal Kenya and Mozambique. Our results highlight different dimensions of wellbeing affected by ecosystem services, and how these are valued differently by men and women. However, it is not just the division of costs and benefits of ecosystem services that is gendered. Using a heuristic device of the ‘ecosystem-wellbeing chain’ we explain patterns within our primary data as an outcome of gendered knowledge systems, gendered behavioural expectations, gendered access to resources and gendered institutions. We conclude that this holistic, gendered understanding of ecosystem services is important not just for how ecosystem services are conceptualised, but also for the development and implementation of sustainable and equitable policy and interventions.

Here we describe an interdisciplinary and multi-country initiative to develop rapid, participatory methods to assess the vulnerability of coastal communities and facilitate adaptation to climate change in data-poor regions. The methods were applied in Madagascar as a case study. The initiative centered on an exploratory research exercise in two communities in the south-west of Madagascar, a workshop held in Antananarivo in June 2016, combined with a component on communicating ocean science and climate change to stakeholders. It utilized innovative and rapid approaches to combine global and local skills and information on adaptation and resilience building, taking cognizance of national policies, and was based on the principles of a holistic, integrated and participatory approach. This paper summarizes the activities undertaken and assesses how effective they were in achieving the project goals, as well as presenting examples of the outputs obtained. The activities demonstrated the value of using existing high resolution global climate models for provision of information on future trends, and of including a traits-based ecological risk assessment as a standard component of vulnerability assessments. User-friendly qualitative modeling activities helped to consolidate holistic, integrated understanding of selected fisheries. The value of assessing the importance and resilience of supply chains and taking the local management measures and institutions into account were validated. The outcomes of the initiative reinforced the principle that the cumulative ecological and social impacts of individual stressors and drivers on marine-dependent communities must be addressed, including climate-change related stressors. Assessments of vulnerability and adaptation planning should be forward-looking and consider likely changes in the future. They must also be done with participation by local experts and stakeholders to ensure knowledge exchange, local capacity-building and ownership and that outputs are rooted in the local realities, are accepted as being legitimate, and reinforce and complement relevant legal frameworks and laws.

Rising inequalities and accelerating global environmental change pose two of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century. To explore how these phenomena are linked, we apply a social-ecological systems perspective and review the literature to identify six different types of interactions (or "pathways") between inequality and the biosphere. We find that most of the research so far has only considered one-directional effects of inequality on the biosphere, or vice versa. However, given the potential for complex dynamics between socioeconomic and environmental factors within social-ecological systems, we highlight examples from the literature that illustrate the importance of cross-scale interactions and feedback loops between inequality and the biosphere. This review draws on diverse disciplines to advance a systemic understanding of the linkages between inequality and the biosphere, specifically recognizing cross-scale feedbacks and the multidimensional nature of inequality.

Transformations in social-ecological systems to overturn poverty and ecosystem degradation require approaches to knowledge synthesis that are inclusive and open to creative innovation. We draw on interviews with participants and in-depth process observation of an iterative knowledge cocreation process in Kenya and Mozambique that brought together scientists, community representatives, government representatives, and practitioners who had expertise or experience in poverty and/or coastal natural resource use and management. We analyze the communicative spaces opened by techniques of system diagrams and future scenarios, and provide a rich account of the emergent process of developing a “shared conceptual repertoire” as a basis for effective communication and knowledge synthesis. Our results highlight the difficulties of challenging dominant narratives and the creative potential that exists in reflecting on their underpinning assumptions. In our analysis, stories and lived experiences emerged as key means shaping the construction of shared concepts and ideas. We conclude by outlining the implications of designing knowledge cocreation processes that support the task of devising systemic interventions that are robust for a range of future scenarios. This includes embracing the role of stories in generating shared meanings and opening up spaces for exploration of knowledge assumptions that are embedded in intervention narratives.

Conservation designations such as protected areas are increasing in numbers around the world, yet it is widely reported that many are failing to reach their objectives. They are frequently promoted as opportunities for win-win outcomes that can both protect biodiversity and lead to economic benefits for affected communities. This win-win view characterizes the dominant discourse surrounding many protected areas. Although this discourse and the arguments derived from it may lead to initial acceptance of conservation interventions, this study shows how it does not necessarily result in compliance and positive attitudes toward specific protected areas. Consequently, the discourse has important implications not just for making the case for protected area implementation, but also for the likelihood of protected areas reaching their objectives. We explain how the win-win discourse influences support for marine protected areas (MPAs) and, ultimately, their success. Using data from focus groups, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews at three MPA sites in the Philippines, we identified three reasons why the win-win discourse can negatively influence prolonged support for MPAs: dashed expectations, inequity, and temptation. Through an understanding of these issues, it becomes possible to suggest improvements that can be made pre-MPA implementation that can lead to prolonged support of MPAs. A focus on less tangible and economic MPA benefits, aligning MPA goals with cultural and social values, and higher levels of transparency when describing MPA outcomes are all ways in which prolonged support of MPAs can be bolstered.

Although ecosystem services are increasingly recognized as benefits people obtain from nature, we still have a poor understanding of how they actually enhance multidimensional human well-being, and how well-being is affected by ecosystem change. We develop a concept of “ecosystem service elasticity” (ES elasticity) that describes the sensitivity of human well-being to changes in ecosystems. ES Elasticity is a result of complex social and ecological dynamics and is context dependent, individually variable, and likely to demonstrate nonlinear dynamics such as thresholds and hysteresis. We present a conceptual framework that unpacks the chain of causality from ecosystem stocks through flows, goods, value, and shares to contribute to the well-being of different people. This framework builds on previous conceptualizations, but places multidimensional well-being of different people as the final element. This ultimately disaggregated approach emphasizes how different people access benefits and how benefits match their needs or aspirations. Applying this framework to case studies of individual coastal ecosystem services in East Africa illustrates a wide range of social and ecological factors that can affect ES elasticity. For example, food web and habitat dynamics affect the sensitivity of different fisheries ecosystem services to ecological change. Meanwhile high cultural significance, or lack of alternatives enhance ES elasticity, while social mechanisms that prevent access can reduce elasticity. Mapping out how chains are interlinked illustrates how different types of value and the well-being of different people are linked to each other and to common ecological stocks. We suggest that examining chains for individual ecosystem services can suggest potential interventions aimed at poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystems while mapping out of interlinkages between chains can help to identify possible ecosystem service trade-offs and winners and losers. We discuss conceptual and practical challenges of applying such a framework and conclude on its utility as a heuristic for structuring interdisciplinary analysis of ecosystem services and human wellbeing.

A crucial factor in the success of protected areas and conservation efforts in general is the support amongst the adjacent community. It is thought to be especially crucial for the success of small MPAs. Whilst the importance of community support has been highlighted in a number of studies, it has not yet been clearly defined or explicitly studied. Questionnaires were carried out (. N=166) at three different villages within the Visayas region of the Philippines to determine individuals[U+05F3] support towards adjacent MPAs and individual characteristics that have previously been hypothesised to influence support. Multiple regressions analysis determined: (1) Which individual-level factors predict attitude towards MPAs, (2) whether attitudes of individuals are related to actions that benefit the adjacent MPA and (3) whether individual or community-level factors are better predictors of individual support for local community-based MPAs. Knowledge of MPA objectives, perceived participation in decision making, trust towards other fishers and differences between villages all significantly predicted attitudes towards MPAs. Weak relationships were found between attitudes and certain MPA related actions due to contextual factors. Village was not the only significant predictor of both attitudes and MPA related actions; individual characteristics irrespective of differences between villages, were also important in predicting support for the MPA. This study highlights the importance in distinguishing between attitudes and actions of individuals and suggests specific individual characteristics can be vital in influencing support towards MPAs.

Moist lower montane vegetation has rarely been classified beyond broad zonational belts over large altitudinal ranges due to highly diverse species composition and structure. This study shows it is possible to further classify such forest types within Bwindi-Impenetrable National Park (BINP), and that these assemblages can be explained by a combination of environmental conditions and past management. Botanical and environmental data were collected along some 4000 m of linear transects from the area surrounding Mubwindi Swamp, BINP. Ordination using Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) and classification using Two-way Indicator Species Analysis (TWINSPAN) successfully identified four different species assemblages. These forest types were then named on the basis of the ecological characteristics of the species within the group, and the environmental conditions influencing the distribution and past disturbance of the forest. The techniques used were in agreement for three out of the four forest types identified. Analysis using an environmental overlay showed a significant association between forest type and altitude. The results of this study indicate that a regional classification of forest types within moist lower montane forest belt using only tree species is possible, and that the forest types identified can be explained by environmental conditions and past management. © 2009 the Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.