Citation:

Russell, M., S. Yee, M. Harwell, Ted DeWitt, Randy Bruins, P. Ringold, C. Rhodes, C. Carollo, C. Kelble, D. Yoskowitz, JohnM Johnston, L. Smith, AND R. Fulford. An operational structured decision making framework for assessing changes in final ecosystem goods and services and consequences to human well-being. A Community on Ecosystem Services, Jacksonville, FL, December 05 - 09, 2016.

Impact/Purpose:

Abstract for ACES conference

Description:

Pressure to develop an operational framework for decision makers to employ the concepts of ecosystem goods and services for assessing changes to human well-being has been increasing since these concepts gained widespread notoriety after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report. Many conceptual frameworks have been proposed, but most do not propose methodologies and tools to make this approach to decision making implementable. Building on common components of existing conceptual frameworks for ecosystem services and human well-being assessment we apply a structured decision making approach to develop a standardized operational framework and suggest tools and methods for completing each step. The structured decision making approach consists of six steps: 1) Clarify the Decision Context 2) Define Objectives and Evaluation Criteria 3) Develop Alternatives 4) Estimate Consequences 5) Evaluate Trade-Offs and Select and 6) Implement and Monitor. These six steps include the following activities, and suggested tools, when applied to ecosystem goods and services and human well-being conceptual frameworks: 1) Characterization of decision specific human beneficiaries using the Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS) approach and Classification System (FEGS-CS) 2) Determine beneficiaries’ relative priorities for human well-being domains in the Human Well-Being Index (HWBI) through stakeholder engagement and identify beneficiary-relevant metrics of FEGS using the National Ecosystem Services Classification System (NESCS) 3) Develop decision related scenarios/alternatives 4) Link decision alternatives to changes in FEGS using models in the ecological production functions model library 5) Translate changes in FEGS to domains of well-being using beneficiaries’ relative priorities established in step two, calculate beneficiary specific tradeoffs and overall changes in community well-being for each scenario/alternative using the HWBI and select one and 6) Implement and monitor using metrics of FEGS and domains of HWBI. We propose this operational framework and suite of existing tools as a standardized approach to assessing decision alternatives in the context of ecosystem services and human well-being.

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