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

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Janina Kleemann
  • Matthias Schröter
  • Kenneth J. Bagstad
  • Christian Kuhlicke
  • Thomas Kastner
  • Dor Fridman
  • Catharina J.E. Schulp
  • Sarah Wolff
  • Javier Martínez-López
  • Thomas Koellner
  • Sebastian Arnhold
  • Berta Martín-López
  • Alexandra Marques
  • Laura Lopez-Hoffman
  • Jianguo Liu
  • Meidad Kissinger
  • Carlos Antonio Guerra
  • Aletta Bonn
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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number102051
JournalGlobal Environmental Change
Volume61
Number of pages26
ISSN0959-3780
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.03.2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. A trilogy of inequalities: Land ownership, forest cover and ecosystem services distribution
  2. Theorizing the Role of Metaphors in Co-orienting Collective Action Toward Grand Challenges
  3. Impacts of species richness on productivity in a large-scale subtropical forest experiment
  4. Failed mobility transition in an ideal setting and implications for building a green city
  5. IT-Effizienzverstärker oder Komplexitätsbetreiber in der analytischen Unternehmenssteuerung?
  6. Maternal transfer of emerging brominated and chlorinated flame retardants in European eels
  7. Multi-level Governance, Multi-level Deficits: The Case of Drinking Water Management in Hungary
  8. Response to Turnhout et al.’s rethinking biodiversity: From goods and services to “living with”
  9. Embedding Evidence on Conservation Interventions Within a Context of Multilevel Governance
  10. Advancing the Integration of Corporate Sustainability Measurement, Management, and Reporting
  11. Long-term retrospective analysis of the societal metabolism of cobalt in the European Union
  12. Response of saproxylic beetles to small-scale habitat connectivity depends on trophic levels
  13. Regulatory challenges and opportunities for collective renewable energy prosumers in the EU
  14. Facilitating collaborative processes in transdisciplinary research using design prototyping
  15. Toward an ecology of disasters: a primer for the pursuit of ecological research on disasters
  16. Dead end or Pathway to new Relations? Structure and Problems of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement
  17. Sustainable chemistry and the international sustainable chemistry collaborative centre ISC 3
  18. Germany and the Germans as depicted in British children's literature from 1870 to the present