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Use, value, and desire: ecosystem services under agricultural intensification in a changing landscape in West Kalimantan (Indonesia)

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Abstract

A fundamental challenge is to understand and navigate trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES) in dynamic landscapes and to account for interactions between local people and broad-scale drivers, such as agricultural intensification. Many analyses of ES trade-offs rely on static mapping and biophysical indicators while disregarding the multiple uses, values, and desires for ES (UVD-ES) that local people associate with their changing landscapes. Here, a participatory UVD-ES framework was applied to assess differences in the use, values, and desire of ES between three zones with different land-use intensities (with pre-frontier, frontier, and post-frontier landscapes) in West Kalimantan (Indonesia). The analysis revealed that (1) almost the full suite of ES uses has become destabilized as a result of agricultural intensification; (2) ES more closely associated with agricultural intensification were largely desired by local people yet they still valued a diversity of traditional ES, such as those derived from the provision of non-timber forest products, fish, and other ES associated with non-material aspects including those tied to traditional culture; (3) the mismatch in used ES versus valued ES increased with agricultural intensification due to a decrease in the flow of non-timber forest products, aquatic, regulating, and non-material (cultural) ES. Together, exploring UVD-ES patterns in a participatory way helped to reveal locally relevant social-ecological drivers of ES and a multidimensional perspective of ES trade-offs. Our UVD-ES framework offers an opportunity to foster participation as a way to reconnect global environmental research agendas with local and regional landscape contexts.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Tomscha, A. Ickowitz, and Y. Laumonier for their comments, L. Leonald for fieldwork contributions, several anonymous reviewers for their constructive reviews, and Jaqueline Loos for editorial suggestions. This work is part of CGIAR Research on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. We are indebted to workshop participants from Kapuas Hulu.

Funding

Research funding was provided by USAID’s Biodiversity Fund, UK Department for International Development (DfID), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under BC3 “Unit of excellence” (MIMECO, MDM-2017-0714) and IJCI-2016-28475, and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

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Correspondence to Ira J Sutherland.

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Communicated by Jacqueline Loos

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Sutherland, I.J., Van Vianen, J., Rowland, D. et al. Use, value, and desire: ecosystem services under agricultural intensification in a changing landscape in West Kalimantan (Indonesia). Reg Environ Change 23, 148 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02134-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02134-y

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