From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices

Rasmussen, Laura Vang, Christensen, Andreas E., Danielsen, Finn, Dawson, Neil, Martin, Adrian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2916-7712, Mertz, Ole, Sikor, Thomas, Thongmanivong, Sithong and Xaydongvanh, Pheang (2017) From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices. AMBIO, 46 (2). 173–183. ISSN 0044-7447

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Abstract

Ecosystem research focuses on goods and services, thereby ascribing beneficial values to the ecosystems. Depending on the context, however, outputs from ecosystems can be both positive and negative. We examined how provisioning services of wild animals and plants can switch between being services and disservices. We studied agricultural communities in Laos to illustrate when and why these switches take place. Government restrictions on land use combined with economic and cultural changes have created perceptions of rodents and plants as problem species in some communities. In other communities that are maintaining shifting cultivation practices, the very same taxa were perceived as beneficial. We propose conversion factors that in a given context can determine where an individual taxon is located along a spectrum from ecosystem service to disservice, when, and for whom. We argue that the omission of disservices in ecosystem service accounts may lead governments to direct investments at inappropriate targets.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Uncontrolled Keywords: cash crop production,conservation,ecosystem disservices,ecosystem services,shifting cultivation,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_on_land
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of International Development
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Global Environmental Justice
University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2016 00:56
Last Modified: 14 Jun 2023 12:42
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60303
DOI: 10.1007/s13280-016-0813-6

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