Participatory Assessment of wetland ecosystem services in the Tweed catchment S. Ncubea and C.J Spraya a UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK
Overall Research Objective
Background •
It is widely acknowledged that ecosystem services are intricately linked to human well-being (Figure 1).
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Ecosystem services have been defined as the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems (MEA, 2005).
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Freshwater ecosystems are argued to be among the most degraded ecosystems in the world.
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Wetlands are an integral part of the freshwater environment as they provide essential ecosystem services.
• To investigate and develop practical participatory approaches to the identification, assessment, governance and delivery of multiple benefits in the Tweed catchment.
Overall Research Question • How can stakeholder communities in the Tweed catchment influence the future management, governance and sustainability of wetland ecosystem services in their catchment, given the historic changes that occurred to these?
Methods Temporal scale Historic Research questions -What are the historic wetlands ecosystem services in the Tweed and what spatial and temporal changes have occurred to these?
The UK-NEA (2011) highlighted the need for case studies in order to improve understanding on how to manage freshwater catchments sustainably through the ecosystem services approach.
However, it has been argued that there is a lack of grassroots stakeholder involvement in decision making and policy development when it comes to environmental management, as these have tended to take a top down approach (Spray et al., 2010), for example the WFD approach is said to have taken little recognition of the bottom up approach.
Future
-Which key ecosystem services are provided by the wetlands in the Tweed catchment?
-How can the values stakeholders place on ecosystem services be best framed and captured?
-How do stakeholder -Can these be associated communities in the with particular Tweed catchment map management and and value the wetland governance regimes in ecosystem services? place at that time?
Figure 1: The link between ecosystem services and human well being
In the European Union, the governance of the water environment in the recent past stems from the Water Framework Directive (2000), which challenges member states to ensure that their waters achieve good ecological status by 2015.
Current
Methods
-Aerial photography interpretation to identify land use changes that have impacted on wetland ecosystem services. -Review of literature and case study reports
-Wetland ecosystem services mapping using e.g., InVEST or Polyscape tools. -Participatory GIS. -Interviews, Online questionnaires, focus group discussions with local stakeholder communities.
-Future scenarios building and analysis (policy and nonpolicy drivers) -Bayesian Belief Model.
Furthermore stakeholder involvement in river basin management planning within the EU has been argued to be less effective and less well developed than comparative systems in Australia and USA (Benson et al., 2012). This research project will be done together with the Tweed Forum and will also involve Scottish Borders Council, Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Natural Heritage.
Study area •
The Tweed catchment (5000 km2) is located in the south east of Scotland and to the north east of England (Figure 2).
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The population in the catchment is estimated to be about 130 000.
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Major activities in the catchment include tourism and fisheries (the Tweed provides 15% of the UK’s spawning grounds for wild Atlantic salmon).
The main land uses are agriculture (75%) and forestry and main issues are related to urban flooding.
Figure 2: The Tweed catchment
Source: www.tweedforum.org
References Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human well-being: A framework for assessment, Island Press, Washington, DC, USA. SPRAY, C., BALL, T. & ROUILLARD, J. (2010) Bridging the Water Law, Policy, Science Interface: Flood Risk Management in Scotland. Journal of Water Law, 20 (2/3), pp.165-174 UK-NEA.:(2011) The UK National Ecosystem Assessment Technical Report. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge. BENSON, D., JORDAN, A. & HUITEMA, D. (2012) Involving the Public in Catchment Management: An Analysis of the Scope for Learning Lessons from Abroad. Environmental Policy and Governance, 22, 42-54