Abstract ID: 539

Securing Social and Biostability in the Andes/Amazon: A Pan Amazonian Situation Analysis of Ecosystem Services and Wellbeing

The Pan Amazon, including the Eastern Andes slopes, represents the world’s largest continuous tropical forest area. Apart from providing essential ecosystem services (ES) to over 22 million urban and rural dwellers, biodiversity in the Amazon/Andes and the biome’s role in global and regional climate regulation are increasingly recognized and at the same time threatened by the worldwide highest rates of forest loss. In 2007 the British Government, through its Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation Program (ESPA), commissioned a regional analysis of the state of ecosystem services and wellbeing in five eco-regions of the world, one of these being the Amazon and Eastern Andes slopes. In April 2008, a consortium lead by the Amazon Initiative presented its final report for the Amazon/Andes region to the ESPA program. In this presentation we summarize the main findings of this situation analysis, on the basis of which the funding strategy for the upcoming five year ESPA research program in the Amazon/Andes will be defined. Based on a spatial analysis of ES supply in the Amazon/Andes region we identify crucial linkages between the Andes and Amazon biomes and point to the need of further integrating natural resource management strategies across countries as a precondition to sustaining biostability in the region. In a second step we combine our findings with the results of an extensive review of the international and regional literature on ES management and its linkages with human wellbeing and the results of an ample stakeholder consultation process covering the six largest Pan Amazonian countries. We finally sketch out a regional research and capacity-building strategy for the ESPA program with the following three key elements: First, understanding and predicting spatial and temporal dynamics of key locally and globally valued ES (especially, forest products and fish resources, local and regional climate regulation, water quality/quantity, and carbon sequestration). Second, understanding, measuring and valuing the qualitative and quantitative contribution of locally important ES to generate well-being among heterogeneous local stakeholder groups. And finally, promote innovative approaches to reduce the transaction costs and strengthen the incipient implementation of incentive-based management options for enhanced ES provision (e.g. certification/ecolabelling, payments for environmental services, ecotourism; as well as other novel MO) and conduct comparative research to extract lessons learned.

Session:  Public Policies and Sustainable Development - Pan Amazonian research perspectives linking Andean and whole Basin natural and social systems.

Presentation Type:  Oral