Benis N Egoh - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Benis N Egoh

Land degradation response actions need motivated stakeholders and investments to improve land man... more Land degradation response actions need motivated stakeholders and investments to improve land management. In this study we present methods to prioritise locations for degradation mitigation investments based on stakeholder preferences for ecosystem services. We combine participatory and spatial modelling approaches and apply these for Zambia, South Africa, and Tanzania to: i) prioritise ecosystem services in each country; ii) to map the supply of these ecosystem services in each country, and; iii) prioritise areas important for investment for the continuous delivery of these ecosystem services based on their vulnerability to land degradation. We interviewed 31 stakeholders from governmental and non-governmental organizations to select the most important ecosystem services per county. Stakeholders were also asked to indicate on national maps the hotspots of these ecosystem services and locations with a high degradation risk. We then assessed the supply of the stakeholder-selected ecosystem services and land degradation risk using GIS-based spatial models. We found that for each country the spatial extent and magnitude of ecosystem services supply and land degradation based on GIS data coincides with stakeholder knowledge in some locations. In the context of supporting national level policy to achieve land degradation neutrality as proposed by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification we argue that the correct representation, the level of acceptance, and use of modelled outputs to support decisions will be greater when model outputs are corroborated by stake-holder knowledge. Ecosystem services that are identified as " important " by diverse stakeholder groups have a broader level of awareness and could therefore drive motivations, commitments, and actions towards improved land management, contributing to land degradation neutrality.

Journal of Applied Ecology, 2015

ABSTRACT Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) highlighted what they call a conceptual flaw in our st... more ABSTRACT Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) highlighted what they call a conceptual flaw in our study (Egoh et al. 2014) and some operational flaws. Here, we respond to these.According to Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015), the conceptual flaw is that we supposedly neglect both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration in the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014). However, we took magnitude of degradation into account in the paper (Egoh et al. 2014) by not including areas with habitats and species in favourable conservation status and also excluding artificial surfaces such as urban areas.We argue that the operational flaws, the authors cite (specifically with respect to the inclusion of restoration cost), were taken out of context and the calculations on the effective area requiring restoration within a grid cell were not well understood by the authors.In the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014), restoration cost was only included in one analysis to investigate the effects of including different criteria on the area selected. Also, each grid cell selected contained only areas defined as restorable in our analysis.Synthesis and applications. The points raised by Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) are surely relevant and pertinent to the general discussion on restoration efforts, but when applied to our study, these points are out of context. Areas identified for restoration should consider magnitude of degradation as in our study. However, the inclusion of cost should be carefully considered; in our case, we used a proxy for cost only to understand the implication of including many criteria in identifying priority areas.

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2015

Ecosystem Services, 2012

Scientific work on ecosystem services has been growing globally as well as in Africa. Human depen... more Scientific work on ecosystem services has been growing globally as well as in Africa. Human dependence on provisioning ecosystem services in particular is mostly acknowledged in developing countries like those in Africa, where many people are poor and reliant on natural resources. The reliance of communities on natural resources in Africa varies from place to place as aridity, vegetation and socio-economic conditions change. In the humid and forested areas in the west and central parts of Africa, food and raw materials coupled with agriculture are important ecosystem services while in the dryer arid and semi-arid countries in southern and northern Africa, tourism, water and grazing are priorities. Overexploitation of resources coupled with large scale agriculture threatens both ecosystem services and livelihoods. The need to safeguard ecosystem services is urgent. There are some efforts to safeguard ecosystem services in Africa. However, realizing benefits to livelihoods still faces serious challenges due to climate change, recent land grabbing and urbanization. These challenges are compounded by the land tenure situation in Africa. Whilst policy goals have been established at both the international and national levels the implementation of such policies and likelihood of them leading to sustainable land management for delivery of ecosystem services remains a key challenge.

Ecological Indicators, 2015

Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem s... more Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem services in monetary terms in order to make a comprehensive and compelling case for conservation of biodiversity. The different approaches and frameworks used so far have shown that there is no economic or monetary estimate of ecosystems or ecosystem services with absolute validity: any valuation exercise is always context-related and the theoretical rationale behind the applied valuation technique does matter. This study presents an approach for assessing ecosystem services in monetary terms to support conservation policies at the regional and continental scale. First we briefly review the foundation of environmental and ecological economics, second we explore the differences between economic models and the application of valuation techniques, third we try to pick the difference between the mainstream economic valuation approach and the translation of biophysical models' outcomes in monetary terms. Then we present and discuss a methodology suitable for associating a monetary cost to ecosystem services when the purpose addresses conservation policies. In order to provide a contribution, we show a practical case study on water purification in the northern Mediterranean region.

Ecosystem Services, 2012

Mainstreaming ecosystem services into policy and decision making is dependent on the availability... more Mainstreaming ecosystem services into policy and decision making is dependent on the availability of spatially explicit information on the state and trends of ecosystems and their services. In particular, the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 addresses the need to account for ecosystem services through biophysical mapping and valuation. This paper reviews current mapping methods, identifies current knowledge gaps and provides the elements for a methodological framework for mapping and assessing ecosystems and their services at European scale. Current mapping methodologies go beyond purely land cover based assessments and include the use of primary data of ecosystem services, the use of functional traits to map ecosystem services and the development of models and ecological production functions. Additional research is needed to cover marine ecosystems and to include the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change in spatially explicit assessments. The ecosystem services cascade which connects ecosystems to human wellbeing is argued to provide a suitable, stepwise framework for mapping ecosystem services in order to support EU policies in a more effective way. We demonstrate the use of this framework for mapping using the water purification service as case.

Ecosystem Services, 2014

A systematic literature review was undertaken to analyse the linkages between different biodivers... more A systematic literature review was undertaken to analyse the linkages between different biodiversity attributes and 11 ecosystem services. The majority of relationships between attributes and ecosystem services cited in the 530 studies were positive. For example, the services of water quality regulation, water flow regulation, mass flow regulation and landscape aesthetics were improved by increases in community and habitat area. Functional traits, such as richness and diversity, also displayed a predominantly positive relationship across the services, most commonly discussed for atmospheric regulation, pest regulation and pollination. A number of studies also discussed a positive correlation with stand age, particularly for atmospheric regulation. Species level traits were found to benefit a number of ecosystem services, with species abundance being particularly important for pest regulation, pollination and recreation, and species richness for timber production and freshwater fishing. Instances of biodiversity negatively affecting the examined ecosystem services were few in number for all ecosystem services, except freshwater provision. The review showed that ecosystem services are generated from numerous interactions occurring in complex systems. However, improving understanding of at least some of the key relationships between biodiversity and service provision will help guide effective management and protection strategies.

Ecosystem Services and Carbon Sequestration in the Biosphere, 2013

PLoS ONE, 2013

Background: Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially during the last decade. Most o... more Background: Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially during the last decade. Most of the studies have focused on assessing and mapping terrestrial ecosystem services highlighting a knowledge gap on marine and coastal ecosystem services (MCES) and an urgent need to assess them.

Journal of Environmental Management, 2011

Grasslands provide many ecosystem services required to support human well-being and are home to a... more Grasslands provide many ecosystem services required to support human well-being and are home to a diverse fauna and flora. Degradation of grasslands due to agriculture and other forms of land use threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services. Various efforts are underway around the world to stem these declines. The Grassland Programme in South Africa is one such initiative and is aimed at safeguarding both biodiversity and ecosystem services. As part of this developing programme, we identified spatial priority areas for ecosystem services, tested the effect of different target levels of ecosystem services used to identify priority areas, and evaluated whether biodiversity priority areas can be aligned with those for ecosystem services. We mapped five ecosystem services (below ground carbon storage, surface water supply, water flow regulation, soil accumulation and soil retention) and identified priority areas for individual ecosystem services and for all five services at the scale of quaternary catchments. Planning for individual ecosystem services showed that, depending on the ecosystem service of interest, between 4% and 13% of the grassland biome was required to conserve at least 40% of the soil and water services. Thirty-four percent of the biome was needed to conserve 40% of the carbon service in the grassland. Priority areas identified for five ecosystem services under three target levels (20%, 40%, 60% of the total amount) showed that between 17% and 56% of the grassland biome was needed to conserve these ecosystem services. There was moderate to high overlap between priority areas selected for ecosystem services and already-identified terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity priority areas. This level of overlap coupled with low irreplaceability values obtained when planning for individual ecosystem services makes it possible to combine biodiversity and ecosystem services in one plan using systematic conservation planning.

Journal of Applied Ecology, 2014

Conservation Biology, 2010

Global declines in biodiversity, together with the widespread degradation of ecosystem services, ... more Global declines in biodiversity, together with the widespread degradation of ecosystem services, have led to urgent calls to safeguard both. Responses to this urgency include calls to integrate the needs of ecosystem services and biodiversity into the design of conservation interventions. The benefits of such integration are purported to include improvements in the justification and resources available for these interventions. However, additional costs and potential trade-offs remain poorly understood in the design of interventions that seek to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study we aim to investigate the synergies and trade-offs in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity in South Africa's Little Karoo. We use data on three ecosystem services: carbon storage, water recharge and fodder provision, together with data on biodiversity to examine several conservation planning scenarios. First, we investigate the amount of each ecosystem service captured incidentally by a conservation plan to meet targets for biodiversity only whilst minimising opportunity costs. We then examine the costs of adding targets for ecosystem services into this conservation plan, and finally explore tradeoffs between biodiversity and ecosystem service targets at a fixed cost. At least 30% of each ecosystem service was captured incidentally when all of biodiversity targets were met. By including data on ecosystem services, we were able to increase the amount of services captured by at least 20% for all three services, without additional costs. When biodiversity targets were reduced by 8%, an extra 40% of fodder provision and water recharge, and 58% of carbon could be captured for the same cost. The opportunity cost (in terms of forgone production) of safeguarding 100% of the biodiversity targets was about US $ 500M. Our results show that with a small decrease in biodiversity target achievement, we can achieve substantial gains for the conservation of ecosystem services within our biodiversity priority areas for no extra cost.

Land degradation response actions need motivated stakeholders and investments to improve land man... more Land degradation response actions need motivated stakeholders and investments to improve land management. In this study we present methods to prioritise locations for degradation mitigation investments based on stakeholder preferences for ecosystem services. We combine participatory and spatial modelling approaches and apply these for Zambia, South Africa, and Tanzania to: i) prioritise ecosystem services in each country; ii) to map the supply of these ecosystem services in each country, and; iii) prioritise areas important for investment for the continuous delivery of these ecosystem services based on their vulnerability to land degradation. We interviewed 31 stakeholders from governmental and non-governmental organizations to select the most important ecosystem services per county. Stakeholders were also asked to indicate on national maps the hotspots of these ecosystem services and locations with a high degradation risk. We then assessed the supply of the stakeholder-selected ecosystem services and land degradation risk using GIS-based spatial models. We found that for each country the spatial extent and magnitude of ecosystem services supply and land degradation based on GIS data coincides with stakeholder knowledge in some locations. In the context of supporting national level policy to achieve land degradation neutrality as proposed by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification we argue that the correct representation, the level of acceptance, and use of modelled outputs to support decisions will be greater when model outputs are corroborated by stake-holder knowledge. Ecosystem services that are identified as " important " by diverse stakeholder groups have a broader level of awareness and could therefore drive motivations, commitments, and actions towards improved land management, contributing to land degradation neutrality.

Journal of Applied Ecology, 2015

ABSTRACT Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) highlighted what they call a conceptual flaw in our st... more ABSTRACT Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) highlighted what they call a conceptual flaw in our study (Egoh et al. 2014) and some operational flaws. Here, we respond to these.According to Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015), the conceptual flaw is that we supposedly neglect both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration in the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014). However, we took magnitude of degradation into account in the paper (Egoh et al. 2014) by not including areas with habitats and species in favourable conservation status and also excluding artificial surfaces such as urban areas.We argue that the operational flaws, the authors cite (specifically with respect to the inclusion of restoration cost), were taken out of context and the calculations on the effective area requiring restoration within a grid cell were not well understood by the authors.In the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014), restoration cost was only included in one analysis to investigate the effects of including different criteria on the area selected. Also, each grid cell selected contained only areas defined as restorable in our analysis.Synthesis and applications. The points raised by Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) are surely relevant and pertinent to the general discussion on restoration efforts, but when applied to our study, these points are out of context. Areas identified for restoration should consider magnitude of degradation as in our study. However, the inclusion of cost should be carefully considered; in our case, we used a proxy for cost only to understand the implication of including many criteria in identifying priority areas.

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2015

Ecosystem Services, 2012

Scientific work on ecosystem services has been growing globally as well as in Africa. Human depen... more Scientific work on ecosystem services has been growing globally as well as in Africa. Human dependence on provisioning ecosystem services in particular is mostly acknowledged in developing countries like those in Africa, where many people are poor and reliant on natural resources. The reliance of communities on natural resources in Africa varies from place to place as aridity, vegetation and socio-economic conditions change. In the humid and forested areas in the west and central parts of Africa, food and raw materials coupled with agriculture are important ecosystem services while in the dryer arid and semi-arid countries in southern and northern Africa, tourism, water and grazing are priorities. Overexploitation of resources coupled with large scale agriculture threatens both ecosystem services and livelihoods. The need to safeguard ecosystem services is urgent. There are some efforts to safeguard ecosystem services in Africa. However, realizing benefits to livelihoods still faces serious challenges due to climate change, recent land grabbing and urbanization. These challenges are compounded by the land tenure situation in Africa. Whilst policy goals have been established at both the international and national levels the implementation of such policies and likelihood of them leading to sustainable land management for delivery of ecosystem services remains a key challenge.

Ecological Indicators, 2015

Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem s... more Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem services in monetary terms in order to make a comprehensive and compelling case for conservation of biodiversity. The different approaches and frameworks used so far have shown that there is no economic or monetary estimate of ecosystems or ecosystem services with absolute validity: any valuation exercise is always context-related and the theoretical rationale behind the applied valuation technique does matter. This study presents an approach for assessing ecosystem services in monetary terms to support conservation policies at the regional and continental scale. First we briefly review the foundation of environmental and ecological economics, second we explore the differences between economic models and the application of valuation techniques, third we try to pick the difference between the mainstream economic valuation approach and the translation of biophysical models' outcomes in monetary terms. Then we present and discuss a methodology suitable for associating a monetary cost to ecosystem services when the purpose addresses conservation policies. In order to provide a contribution, we show a practical case study on water purification in the northern Mediterranean region.

Ecosystem Services, 2012

Mainstreaming ecosystem services into policy and decision making is dependent on the availability... more Mainstreaming ecosystem services into policy and decision making is dependent on the availability of spatially explicit information on the state and trends of ecosystems and their services. In particular, the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 addresses the need to account for ecosystem services through biophysical mapping and valuation. This paper reviews current mapping methods, identifies current knowledge gaps and provides the elements for a methodological framework for mapping and assessing ecosystems and their services at European scale. Current mapping methodologies go beyond purely land cover based assessments and include the use of primary data of ecosystem services, the use of functional traits to map ecosystem services and the development of models and ecological production functions. Additional research is needed to cover marine ecosystems and to include the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change in spatially explicit assessments. The ecosystem services cascade which connects ecosystems to human wellbeing is argued to provide a suitable, stepwise framework for mapping ecosystem services in order to support EU policies in a more effective way. We demonstrate the use of this framework for mapping using the water purification service as case.

Ecosystem Services, 2014

A systematic literature review was undertaken to analyse the linkages between different biodivers... more A systematic literature review was undertaken to analyse the linkages between different biodiversity attributes and 11 ecosystem services. The majority of relationships between attributes and ecosystem services cited in the 530 studies were positive. For example, the services of water quality regulation, water flow regulation, mass flow regulation and landscape aesthetics were improved by increases in community and habitat area. Functional traits, such as richness and diversity, also displayed a predominantly positive relationship across the services, most commonly discussed for atmospheric regulation, pest regulation and pollination. A number of studies also discussed a positive correlation with stand age, particularly for atmospheric regulation. Species level traits were found to benefit a number of ecosystem services, with species abundance being particularly important for pest regulation, pollination and recreation, and species richness for timber production and freshwater fishing. Instances of biodiversity negatively affecting the examined ecosystem services were few in number for all ecosystem services, except freshwater provision. The review showed that ecosystem services are generated from numerous interactions occurring in complex systems. However, improving understanding of at least some of the key relationships between biodiversity and service provision will help guide effective management and protection strategies.

Ecosystem Services and Carbon Sequestration in the Biosphere, 2013

PLoS ONE, 2013

Background: Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially during the last decade. Most o... more Background: Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially during the last decade. Most of the studies have focused on assessing and mapping terrestrial ecosystem services highlighting a knowledge gap on marine and coastal ecosystem services (MCES) and an urgent need to assess them.

Journal of Environmental Management, 2011

Grasslands provide many ecosystem services required to support human well-being and are home to a... more Grasslands provide many ecosystem services required to support human well-being and are home to a diverse fauna and flora. Degradation of grasslands due to agriculture and other forms of land use threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services. Various efforts are underway around the world to stem these declines. The Grassland Programme in South Africa is one such initiative and is aimed at safeguarding both biodiversity and ecosystem services. As part of this developing programme, we identified spatial priority areas for ecosystem services, tested the effect of different target levels of ecosystem services used to identify priority areas, and evaluated whether biodiversity priority areas can be aligned with those for ecosystem services. We mapped five ecosystem services (below ground carbon storage, surface water supply, water flow regulation, soil accumulation and soil retention) and identified priority areas for individual ecosystem services and for all five services at the scale of quaternary catchments. Planning for individual ecosystem services showed that, depending on the ecosystem service of interest, between 4% and 13% of the grassland biome was required to conserve at least 40% of the soil and water services. Thirty-four percent of the biome was needed to conserve 40% of the carbon service in the grassland. Priority areas identified for five ecosystem services under three target levels (20%, 40%, 60% of the total amount) showed that between 17% and 56% of the grassland biome was needed to conserve these ecosystem services. There was moderate to high overlap between priority areas selected for ecosystem services and already-identified terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity priority areas. This level of overlap coupled with low irreplaceability values obtained when planning for individual ecosystem services makes it possible to combine biodiversity and ecosystem services in one plan using systematic conservation planning.

Journal of Applied Ecology, 2014

Conservation Biology, 2010

Global declines in biodiversity, together with the widespread degradation of ecosystem services, ... more Global declines in biodiversity, together with the widespread degradation of ecosystem services, have led to urgent calls to safeguard both. Responses to this urgency include calls to integrate the needs of ecosystem services and biodiversity into the design of conservation interventions. The benefits of such integration are purported to include improvements in the justification and resources available for these interventions. However, additional costs and potential trade-offs remain poorly understood in the design of interventions that seek to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study we aim to investigate the synergies and trade-offs in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity in South Africa's Little Karoo. We use data on three ecosystem services: carbon storage, water recharge and fodder provision, together with data on biodiversity to examine several conservation planning scenarios. First, we investigate the amount of each ecosystem service captured incidentally by a conservation plan to meet targets for biodiversity only whilst minimising opportunity costs. We then examine the costs of adding targets for ecosystem services into this conservation plan, and finally explore tradeoffs between biodiversity and ecosystem service targets at a fixed cost. At least 30% of each ecosystem service was captured incidentally when all of biodiversity targets were met. By including data on ecosystem services, we were able to increase the amount of services captured by at least 20% for all three services, without additional costs. When biodiversity targets were reduced by 8%, an extra 40% of fodder provision and water recharge, and 58% of carbon could be captured for the same cost. The opportunity cost (in terms of forgone production) of safeguarding 100% of the biodiversity targets was about US $ 500M. Our results show that with a small decrease in biodiversity target achievement, we can achieve substantial gains for the conservation of ecosystem services within our biodiversity priority areas for no extra cost.