Quantifying interregional flows of multiple ecosystem services – A case study for Germany

Despite a growing number of national-scale ecosystem service (ES) assessments, few studies consider the impacts of ES use and consumption beyond national or regional boundaries. Interregional ES flows – ecosystem services “imported” from and “exported” to other countries – are rarely analyzed and their importance for global sustainability is little known. Here, we provide a first multi-ES quantification of a nation's use of ES from abroad. We focus on ES flows that benefit the population in Germany but are supplied outside German territory. We employ a conceptual framework recently developed to systematically quantify interregional ES flows. We address four types of interregional ES flows with: (i) biophysical flows of traded goods: cocoa import for consumption; (ii) flows mediated by migratory species: migration of birds providing pest control; (iii) passive biophysical flows: flood control along transboundary watersheds; and (iv) information flows: China's giant panda loan to the Berlin Zoo. We determined that: (i) Ivory Coast and Ghana alone supply around 53% of Germany's cocoa while major negative consequences for biodiversity occurred in Cameroon and Ecuador; (ii) Africa´s humid and sub-humid climate zones are important habitats for the majority of migratory bird species that provide natural pest control services in agricultural areas in Germany; (iii) Upstream watersheds outside the country add an additional 64% flood regulation services nationally, while Germany exports 40% of flood regulation services in neighboring, downstream countries; (iv) Information flows transported by the pandas were mainly related to political aspects and - contrary to our expectations - considerably less on biological and natural aspects. We discuss the implications of these results for international resource management policy and governance.

KLEEMANN Janina;  SCHROTER Matthias;  BAGSTAD Kenneth;  KUHLICKE Christian;  KASTNER Thomas;  FRIDMAN Dor;  SCHULP C.J.E.;  WOLFF S;  MARTÍNEZ-LÓPEZ Javier;  KOELLNER Thomas;  ARNHOLD Sebastian;  MARTÍN-LÓPEZ Berta;  PENEDO DE SOUSA MARQUES Alexandra;  LÓPEZ-HOFFMAN Laura;  LIU Jianguo Liu;  KISSINGER Meidad;  GUERRA Carlos;  BONN Aletta; 

2020-07-16

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC118683

0959-3780 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378018314705#sec0018,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC118683,   

10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102051 (online),