Ecosystem services approach in Latin America: from theoretical promises to real applications

Abstract

The Ecosystem Services concept has become a tool widely used to understand the links between the functioning of ecosystems and human well-being to inform policy makers and land-use managers (Fisher et al., 2009). The Ecosystem Services Approach (hereafter, ESA) underwent a remarkable theoretical and methodological development in the last two decades (Costanza et al., 2017). In Latin America, the scientific community adopted the framework very early and made its own significant contributions (Balvanera et al., 2012). Nonetheless, there is a common perception that the ESA has not been extensively incorporated in private and public decision making as it was initially expected (Ruckelshaus et al., 2015; Laterra et al., 2017; Olander et al., 2017; Saarikoski et al., 2017). There is still work to do in mainstreaming the concept, as one possible tool to help solve ongoing socioenvironmental problems (Dick et al., 2017; Saarikoski et al., 2017).