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This study implements the ecosystem service framework to link the concepts of farming activity and ecosystem restoration within the circular economy. It proposes a method for identifying social indicators of ecosystem restoration that can be taken into account in the transition towards more circular and sustainable agricultural systems. Using a cas...
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... the analysis of perception and preferences for crops identified the almond tree as the most valuable crop in the region, followed by cereal and olive (Fig. 2). Both the free-listing and ranking identified almond trees as the most important crop (Fig. 2). Additionally, the analysis of preferences also identified these crops as the most preferred by locals, with an average importance of 3.26 for the almond tree, 2.34 for cereal and 2.07 for olive ( Figure. S4; Appendix ...
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... the analysis of perception and preferences for crops identified the almond tree as the most valuable crop in the region, followed by cereal and olive (Fig. 2). Both the free-listing and ranking identified almond trees as the most important crop (Fig. 2). Additionally, the analysis of preferences also identified these crops as the most preferred by locals, with an average importance of 3.26 for the almond tree, 2.34 for cereal and 2.07 for olive ( Figure. S4; Appendix ...
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... ES were mostly ranked as less important in both the pre-and post-restoration. Further details regarding changes in ES importance between pre-and post-phases provided in see supplementary material ( Figure S2; Appendix C). ...
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... found that in each restoration stages the health component was indirectly connected to all ES categories (Fig. 8). Figure S2 of Appendix C summarizes linkages between ES categories and human well-being components. ...
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... the number and diversity of ES increased significantly due to the restoration with almond trees, going from a single ES (i.e., 90% only identified food production) to the identification of 13 ES that included both cultural and regulating ES, (an increase of 27% and 18% of respondents, respectively). This result reflects that almond cultivation is not only perceived as an opportunity to increase food production (provisioning services), but also other cultural benefits (i.e., sense of belonging) and benefits associated with ecosystem processes (i.e., soil fertility) (Pérez-Ramírez et al., 2019). Additionally, we also identified an increase in the social concern regarding those benefits classified as critical (e.g., pollination and air purification). ...
Citations
... Presently, the HRB is in a critical period of transition to high-quality development, while the health and stability of the ecosystem bear crucial implications for the basin's highquality economic and social advancement [6]. Ecosystem services serve as a crucial link between natural ecosystems and socio-economic systems, encompassing these benefits, including water supply, air purification, soil conservation, food production, and cultural enrichment [7], ensuring human health and well-being [8][9][10]. Presently, the application of ecosystem services extends to various domains such as ecological health diagnosis, ecological product supply, ecological compensation [11], and ecological management [12]. ...
Strengthening the exploration of synergistic promotion mechanisms between ecosystem services (ESs) and new urbanization is of great significance for watershed development. In this work, we revealed the evolution mechanism of coupling coordination development degree (CCD) between ESs and new urbanization and its driving factors in the Huaihe River Basin (HRB) from 1980 to 2020 using a combination of the CCD model, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) method, and GeoDetector model. Additionally, we employed the PLUS model to investigate multi-scenario simulations. The results demonstrate that ESs showed a decline initially, followed by an increase, while the urbanization index showed consistent annual growth over the four decades. Furthermore, the CCD between the ESs and urbanization showed a yearly optimization trend. The CCD demonstrated notable spatial clustering characteristics, with factors such as precipitation, distance from water body, elevation, and per area GDP emerged as the primary drivers. Under scenarios of ecological protection, comprehensive development, and natural protection, the value of ESs from 2020 to 2050 maintained an upward trend; however, it fell with the decrease under the scenario of cropland protection. These research findings offer valuable decision-making support for the differentiated regulation of ecosystem functions and promotion of high-quality urbanization development in the HRB.
... The most frequently identified category following employment was health and well-being. This included health impacts related to changes in pollution levels, for example, addressing the human health impacts of increased pollution for people local to landfill mining activities in Belgium (Einhäupl et al., 2021) and access to cleaner air following an almond trees restoration project in Spain (Alba-Patiño et al., 2021). The impact of CE policies on safety was also highlighted by the literature, such as increasing the perceived sense of safety of residents local to CE-related projects (e.g. through enabling improved lighting infrastructure (Obaideen et al., 2021)). ...
Socioeconomic impacts of Circular Economy (CE) policies, particularly those that are not easily quantifiable, are frequently overlooked. To address this shortcoming, a comprehensive Typology of Socioeconomic Impacts is developed in this work, which encompasses a wide range of identified impacts as well as providing insights into policy objectives, measures, economic sectors and products. The aim of this study is to offer lessons learned and recommendations to improve CE policymaking in the EU by making the scope and depth of socioeconomic impact assessments more comprehensive. It provides good practice examples from the literature analysed, EU impact assessments and evaluations as well as from international organisations, national and local governments and civil society.
... Thus, understanding the relationships among urbanization, ecosystem service value(ESV), and HWB and finding coordinated development paths are crucial for the area and similar regions globally, necessitating comprehensive planning and scientific decisions in multiple aspects. Scholars have made significant progress in comprehending the influence of urbanization on ESV [12,13] and the interplay between ESV and HWB [14,15]. First, concerning urbanization and ecosystem systems, the pressure-state-response framework [16], environmental Kuznets curve, and decoupling theory [17] were developed to examine the interactions between urbanization and the ecological environment. ...
The ecological and social problems brought about by China’s rapid urbanization process threaten sustainable development. Taking the cities with high and coarse sediment yield in the middle reaches of the Yellow River as the research objects, this study constructed a complex analytical framework composed of urbanization, ecosystem service value (ESV), and human well-being (HBW) subsystems. The equivalent factor method (EFM) was used to evaluate the ESV. The entropy weight method (EWM) and the comprehensive nighttime light index (CNLI) were adopted to assess the level of urbanization and human well-being. Then, coupled coordination degree (CCD) and grey relational modes were developed to reveal the level and major obstacles of synergistic development. The results showed that, from 2000 to 2020, urbanization, ESV, and HWB increased. The average value of CCD grew from 0.34 to 0.56, with higher coordination levels in the northeast and south. The coordinated development is influenced by multiple factors, with the intensity of the driving factors decreasing in the order of industrial structure, population quality, economic drive, government regulation, and scientific and technological support. The results indicate that it is essential to formulate differentiated regionally coordinated development strategies and establish cross-regional cooperation mechanisms to achieve interactive urban economic development, ecological protection, and well-being improvements in the middle reaches of the Yellow River.
... According to Gehl (1987), if the quality of the outdoor environment is good, the frequency of social interaction increases. Furthermore, the maintenance of the outdoor environment's biodiversity and its restoration have a positive effect on improving the quality of social indicators and human wellbeing (Alba-Patino et al., 2021). ...
Although mixed-use campuses are recognized by designers, little attention is paid to the social values that their outdoor environment generates for the wider community. Aiming to identify social values, the methodology used in this study includes a survey that is applied via an online questionnaire (N=156) to explore users' perceptions about the values the campus produces to translate into indicators of wellbeing. This study's aim is to identify indicators of wellbeing that can capture campus social value, referring to a continuously changing campus (Agricultural University of Tirana). The results indicate that the social and cultural benefits that come from a mixed-use campus are related to the adequacy of physical outdoor environments and social activities. However, compared to mixed-use spaces, outdoor spaces that preserve the functions of agricultural backgrounds (as originally designed) have higher social values. We suggest that both physical and non-physical determinants play a basic role in enhancing social interaction (this is a strong indicator), so they must be included in the policies and strategies of the higher education systems.
... Ecosystem restoration usually is a multipurpose approach. On the one hand, local people may recover goods, such as wood, food, and native medicinal plants, which are natural resources that could provide a livelihood for increasing local people's well-being (Alba-Patiño et al. 2021;Aronson et al. 2020). In the long term, the communities might obtain payment for conserving capital natural restored, and hence decrease poverty (Alix-Garcia et al. 2018;Nieratka et al. 2015). ...
... Initiatives such as afforestation and wetland restoration can enhance ecosystem resilience and self-purification. The restoration of ecosystem structure and function can bolster resilience to environmental change, thereby promoting human well-being and biodiversity [45]. Increased efforts to conserve local biodiversity, particularly in key ecological areas offering essential services, are vital for sustaining natural ecosystems. ...
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the coupled coordination degree of climate, environmental, socio-economic, and ecosystem resilience in Zhejiang Province from 2010 to 2022 and to propose optimization strategies. With the increasing impact of global climate change, the need to explore the construction of resilient cities and sustainable development models has become increasingly pressing. Assessing the coupled coordination among climate, environment, socio-economic, and ecosystem resilience aids in suggesting more precise and effective social and ecological recovery strategies in the context of climate change. Zhejiang Province, serving as a model for China’s urbanization development, demonstrates a balance between the natural environment, economic growth, and social development but still suffers from ecological and environmental pollution problems. In this study, an evaluation system was constructed utilizing the entropy weight method (EWM), and the coupled coordination among climate, environmental, socio-economic, and ecosystem resilience in Zhejiang Province was empirically analyzed over the period from 2010 to 2022. The results show that (1) the climatic-environmental, socio-economic, and ecological subsystems of cities in Zhejiang Province generally show an upward trend, despite fluctuations over different periods. (2) The climatic-environmental-social-ecological system resilience of the cities in Zhejiang Province increased as a whole, and six cities (Hangzhou: 0.805, Quzhou: 0.811, Huzhou: 0.827, Taizhou: 0.829, Wenzhou: 0.856, and Jinhua: 0.857) reached the “well-coordinated” level by 2022; however, the coupling coordination of Jiaxing City and Lishui City decreased from good to intermediate coordination. (3) The coupled coordination degree of climatic-environmental-social-ecological system resilience generally stagnated in each city during 2020–2022. Thus, the climate change adaptation strategy proposed in this study aims to enhance urban adaptive capacity to climate change impacts by controlling pollutant emissions, restoring ecosystems, optimizing industrial structures, and designing urban green spaces.
... Social ambition is more difficult to define because it is extremely multi-faceted. It might relate to the degree of stakeholder participation in the restoration process (see, for example, Arnstein's (1969) classic ''ladder of participation''), or more generally, to the material and non-material benefits that people obtain from restoration, including livelihoods (Erbaugh and Oldekop 2018), human-nature connectedness (Furness 2021), social cohesion (Alba-Patiño et al. 2021), or other dimensions of environmental justice (Löfqvist et al. 2022). In practice, the ecological and the social level of ambition are likely interrelated and as such can be captured by the notion of ''social-ecological ambition''. ...
Expanding in both scope and scale, ecosystem restoration needs to embrace complex social–ecological dynamics. To help scientists and practitioners navigate ever new demands on restoration, we propose the “social–ecological ladder of restoration ambition” as a conceptual model to approach dynamically shifting social and ecological restoration goals. The model focuses on three dynamic aspects of restoration, namely degrading processes, restoration goals and remedial actions. As these three change through time, new reinforcing and balancing feedback mechanisms characterize the restoration process. We illustrate our model through case studies in which restoration has become increasingly ambitious through time, namely forest landscape restoration in Rwanda and grassland restoration in Germany. The ladder of restoration ambition offers a new way of applying social–ecological systems thinking to ecosystem restoration. Additionally, it raises awareness of social–ecological trade-offs, power imbalances and conflicting goals in restoration projects, thereby laying an important foundation for finding more practicable and fairer solutions.
... As a result it has been argued that restoration initiatives should be context-specific and consider broader social and economic benefits in order to encourage greater stakeholder involvement (Aronson and Alexander, 2013). With the increasing interest in identifying the intricate linkages between restoring ecosystem health and improving social wellbeing, there have been many studies unraveling social preferences in the context of ecosystem restoration (Alba-Patiño et al., 2021;Aronson et al., 2016). ...
... For example, several studies have aimed to elicit social preferences in the context of ecosystem restoration, as a means of informing restoration actions (Alba-Patiño et al., 2021). Choice experiments have been one of the most promising methods to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for restoration action due to their ability to identify preferences for multiple ecosystem services and evaluate the total economic value of environmental change or ecosystem management (Khan and Zhao, 2019). ...
Mangroves are one of the most biodiverse but degraded type of ecosystems globally. There has been a strong impetus for mangrove restoration globally to compensate for mangrove loss. Understanding the public acceptability and preference heterogeneity for mangrove restoration could help practitioners tailor restoration programs , improve stakeholder engagement, and ultimately improve the chances of restoration success. Here we conduct a choice experiment to understand the heterogeneity of public acceptability for mangrove restoration in the Large Xiamen Bay (LXB), China. We estimate the total economic value of mangrove restoration and compare the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each attribute (including an ecosystem disservice) between participants with different socio-demographic characteristics and living locations. Using both the random parameter logit model and latent class model, our results reveal that the respondents' location, socio-demographic characteristics , interaction with the coastal environment, and knowledge about mangroves have significant effects on their acceptability and preference for mangrove restoration. Such findings can provide guidance to practitioners when planning and implementing mangrove restoration projects, to improve the effectiveness and equity of restoration actions in LXB and beyond. By including an ecosystem disservice our study arguably elicits more comprehensively preference tradeoffs, which should be considered in future applications of choice experiments for ecosystem restoration.
... These six attributes broadly correspond to the three generally accepted ecological attributes of restored forests relative to the reference ecosystem: vegetation structure, species diversity and abundance, and ecological processes, which are frequently used to classify indicators or variables of ecosystem condition in the literature (Noss, 1990;Aronson et al., 1993;Ruiz-Jaén & Aide, 2005;Wortley et al., 2013;Gatica-Saavedra et al., 2017). There is a growing consensus that incorporating socio-economic attributes or indicators will enhance the assessment of restoration success (Gann & Lamb, 2006;Egan & Estrada, 2013;Shackelford et al., 2013;Li et al., 2017;Alba-Patino et al., 2021). In a review of forest landscape restoration practice, Mansourian et al. (2017) emphasized the need for restoration success to focus more on a scale of impact than the scale of effort and concluded that forest restoration should be viewed as a tool for achieving human and ecological objectives as opposed to an end in itself. ...
Deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics has resulted in the depletion of vital forest resources and services, the near eradication of suitable habitats for forest fauna and flora, and the impoverishment of human populations reliant on forest ecosystems. The rapid and concerning pace of deforestation in tropical regions calls for urgent and pragmatic steps to tackle the root causes and rehabilitate or restore degraded and deforested landscapes. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of old, unmanaged forest plantations compared to similar-aged secondary forests in restoring forest stand structure, floristics and diversity of vascular plants, and important ecological functions with reference to neighbouring primary forests. In addition, timber value was estimated and compared among the three forest types. The research was conducted across 11 sites within Ghana's moist and wet climatic/forest zones. Systematic random sampling of 93 plots each measuring 20m × 20m with nested subplots measuring 5m x 5m for saplings and 2m x 2m for ground vegetation was undertaken. Forty-two years after establishment and/or abandonment, both the plantation and secondary forests showed structural attributes comparable to those of the primary forests. Nevertheless, the plantation recorded much higher bole volume and basal area compared to the secondary forests. The secondary, plantation and primary forests exhibited considerable overlap in terms of floral composition, with the presence of several rare and restricted-range species. A significant proportion of primary forest vascular plant species, namely 60% and 77%, were identified in the secondary and plantation forests, respectively. The diversity of plant species, as quantified by the Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index (H') and Simpson Index (S), showed no significant variation between primary (H'=3.07, S = 0.91) and secondary (H'=2.95, S = 0.87) or plantation (H'=2.85, S = 0.87) forests. Generally, the primary and secondary forests exhibited higher species richness than the plantations. The mean above-ground carbon stocks of the plantations (159.7 ± 14.3 Mg ha-1 ) was found to be similar to that of the primary forests (173.0 ± 25.1 Mg ha-1 ), but both were much higher than the secondary forests (103.4 ± 12.0 Mg ha-1 ). Soil pH levels in the wet sites were much lower, ranging from 4.2 to 4.6, compared to moist sites, which had pH levels ranging from 4.6 to 5.4. Soil physicochemical properties, carbon stocks, fertility, microbial activity, and litter decomposition measurements across the different forest types within the climatic zones were similar. Nevertheless, significant differences were observed between climatic zones. Contrary to results of earlier tropical studies, we observed higher litter decomposition rates in the moist compared to the wet zone, which experiences higher annual rainfall, especially for the recalcitrant carbon fraction of the litter. Relatedly, soil microbial biomass and microbial population were significantly greater in the moist compared to the wet zone. Mean soil carbon stocks (0 - 50 cm) was significantly higher in the wet (106.8 Mg ha-1 ) compared to the moist (56.9 Mg ha-1 ), with mean site values ranging from 51.16 Mg ha-1 to 122.84 Mg ha-1 . The mean timber stumpage value of plantations was 3112 and $1870 per hectare, respectively. Tropical forest plantations established on long rotations under low-intensity management regimes, and secondary forests can evolve into forest systems that exhibit structural complexity, floristic diversity, ecological functionality, and self-sustainability, akin to primary forests. Such forest plantations and secondary forests constitute viable pathways for the restoration of deforested landscapes and climate change mitigation, while potentially providing landowners with moderate financial returns through selective timber harvesting.
... Puesto que, los beneficios sociales y culturales que se pueden obtener de los ecosistemas están asociados con multitud de servicios, y no como se podría pensar inicialmente que hiciesen referencia únicamente a los SE de la categoría cultural. Es por ello que, como apuntaron Chan et al. (2012a), en dicho enfoque las investigaciones y evaluaciones de los servicios se deben centrar en lo que les importa a las personas, dado que los beneficios socioculturales que se obtienen de los servicios ecosistémicos pueden utilizarse como indicadores del bienestar humano (Alba-Patiño et al., 2021). ...
En las últimas décadas se ha incrementado la investigación en materia de evaluación de servicios ecosistémicos (SE), aunque en general se ha centrado en el análisis biofísico y económico sin prestar atención a la componente social. El propósito de este estudio es explorar cómo se valoran los SE desde un enfoque sociocultural, incluyendo la coparticipación de diferentes grupos de interés (stakeholders). Para ello se ha realizado un análisis sistemático de la literatura científica indexada en las bases de datos Scopus y Web of Science. A partir de la revisión bibliográfica, se han podido establecer las características y servicios que predominan en las evaluaciones socioculturales, y, por otro lado, se ha detectado una carencia de estudios en el marco de los parques naturales/protegidos y los bosques mediterráneos. Es por ello, que los hallazgos obtenidos podrían servir como referencia en el planteamiento de estudios de evolución, planificación y futuras actuaciones políticas sobre sostenibilidad y concienciación medioambiental.
