Rapid Assessment of Ecosystem Service Co-Benefits of Biodiversity Priority Areas in Madagascar

The importance of ecosystems for supporting human well-being is increasingly recognized by both the conservation and development sectors. Our ability to conserve ecosystems that people rely on is often limited by a lack of spatially explicit data on the location and distribution of ecosystem services (ES), the benefits provided by nature to people. Thus there is a need to map ES to guide conservation investments, to ensure these co-benefits are maintained. To target conservation investments most effectively, ES assessments must be rigorous enough to support conservation planning, rapid enough to respond to decision-making timelines, and often must rely on existing data. We developed a framework for rapid spatial assessment of ES that relies on expert and stakeholder consultation, available data, and spatial analyses in order to rapidly identify sites providing multiple benefits. We applied the framework in Madagascar, a country with globally significant biodiversity and a high level of human dependence on ecosystems. Our objective was to identify the ES co-benefits of biodiversity priority areas in order to guide the investment strategy of a global conservation fund. We assessed key provisioning (fisheries, hunting and non-timber forest products, and water for domestic use, agriculture, and hydropower), regulating (climate mitigation, flood risk reduction and coastal protection), and cultural (nature tourism) ES. We also conducted multi-criteria analyses to identify sites providing multiple benefits. While our approach has limitations, including the reliance on proximity-based indicators for several ES, the results were useful for targeting conservation investments by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). Because our approach relies on available data, standardized methods for linking ES provision to ES use, and expert validation, it has the potential to quickly guide conservation planning and investment decisions in other data-poor regions.

生态系统对人类福祉的支撑作用，正日益获得保护与发展领域的广泛认可。人类赖以生存的生态系统保护工作，常因缺乏生态系统服务（Ecosystem Services, ES）——即大自然为人类提供的各类福祉——的空间显式位置与分布数据而受阻。因此，亟需绘制生态系统服务分布图，以指导保护投资、保障此类协同效益得以留存。为实现保护投资的精准靶向，生态系统服务评估需兼具严谨性以支撑保护规划、时效性以契合决策周期，且通常需依托现有数据开展。为此，本研究构建了一套生态系统服务快速空间评估框架，该框架整合专家与利益相关方咨询、现有公开数据及空间分析技术，可快速识别可提供多重生态系统服务的区域。我们将该框架应用于马达加斯加——一个拥有全球重要生物多样性且人类高度依赖生态系统的国家，研究目标为识别生物多样性优先保护区的生态系统服务协同效益，以指导某全球保护基金的投资策略制定。本次评估涵盖核心的供给服务（渔业、狩猎与非木材林产品，以及生活用水、农业用水与水力发电用水）、调节服务（气候减缓、洪水风险防控与海岸防护）及文化服务（自然旅游）三类生态系统服务，并通过多准则分析筛选出可提供多重生态系统服务的区域。尽管本研究方法存在一定局限，例如部分生态系统服务采用了基于邻近性的评估指标，但研究结果可有效支撑关键生态系统伙伴基金（Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, CEPF）的保护投资靶向工作。由于该框架依托现有数据、生态系统服务供给与使用关联的标准化方法，以及专家校验环节，其有望快速为其他数据匮乏地区的保护规划与投资决策提供指导。