A proposal

Ferdinando Villa and Marta Ceroni

Gund Institute, UVM

Rudolf DeGroot

Environmental Systems Analysis group, Wageningen University

It is increasingly recognised that more and better information on socio-cultural and economic benefits of ecosystem services is necessary to:

	demonstrate the contribution of ecosystems to the local, national and global economy, and thus build local and political support for conservation and sustainable use;
	convince (potential) donors that the benefits of conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and protected areas (usually) outweigh the costs and thus attract investments;
	identify the users and beneficiaries of ecosystem-services to secure financial streams for the long-term maintenance of these services .

Quantifying the economic value of ecosystem services (Ecosystem Services Valuation, or ESV) is a vehicle for assuring acceptance of public management of ecosystems. Yet, the full value of biodiversity and a healthy natural environment is still not fully reflected in economic accounting procedures and decision making, leading to continuing loss and degradation of natural and managed ecosystems.

Academic and governmental institutions, realizing the importance of ESV in the context of sustainable development, have created extensive data collections, analytical tools, and web-accessible databases [3-7] hosting ESV data, studies, and methods. A growing number of companies now offer consulting services in ES valuation.

Because these efforts are uncoordinated and their scope and interfaces vary widely, their usability as a knowledge base for reliable, reproducible ESV practice worldwide is limited. The Network we propose here will not duplicate existing efforts but will provide an organizational and technical platform for effective communication among all providers of information in order to make existing and future information easily accessible for users: advisory bodies, government agencies, business community, general public, NGOs and anyone else interested in conservation and wise use of the increasingly scarce natural capital.

The proponents are seeking the creation of a worldwide coordination between individuals, institutions and countries to develop and distribute tools and knowledge for the informed use of economic valuations of ecosystem services in land use planning and policy-making. More specifically, this international, coordinated platform will:

	Ensure uniform, open and complete access to and dissemination of the best data available on ecosystem valuation, financing and cost-benefit analysis.
	Evaluate, develop, and endorse transparent and reliable methodological protocols for ESV
	Assist or directly fund ESV data collection and scientific investigations pursued by participants in specific thematic or geographic areas.
	Provide guidelines on how to incorporate ESV knowledge into decision-making.
	Certify applications and practitioners based on the continued and proven adoption of endorsed ESV standards.
	Sponsor activities that are relevant to the mission of the network.

The coordination will work as a distributed network of participant institutions and individuals, united in their intents and goals by the signature of a common memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Each participant can participate as a data/methods provider, a data/methods user or a host of a database of ESV data. The coordination will be distributed in nature, using a central web presence for communication, collaboration and access to data and methods. In addition to a public access website and participant-restricted intranet, the coordination will provide participants with end-user software toolkits, each supporting one of the possible participant roles (Table 2).

The sections below describe in more detail the proposed activities, web presence, forms of participation, governance structure, and technical infrastructure supporting the coordination. This document, open for feedback, aims to start a discussion that leads to an initial consensus on the aims, structure and scope of such an initiative. Invited partners that sign a letter of intent will be invited to the “Planning the Network” meeting to be held in 2005 (funding still to be secured), where an operational proposal for the initiative and a strategy for funding will be defined.

In our vision, the coordination’s main areas of activity will include:

Data dissemination. The network will ensure uniform, open and complete access to and dissemination of the best data available on ecosystem valuation, financing and cost-benefit analysis. These include bibliographic information, economic values and aggregated economic measures of ecosystem services. The coordination will endorse and employ recognized data and metadata standards, or promote the development and adoption of authoritative standards when necessary.

Evaluation, development, and endorsement of methodological protocols. The coordination is committed to the definition of a reliable, transparent and reproducible set of methodologies for ESV, both by direct valuation or by benefits transfer. The scientific board and technical teams will collect indications and feedback from the participants and ensure that the endorsed methodologies are the best available and supported by the coordination’s software toolkits.

Guidelines for ESV data collection and scientific investigations. The Network aims to provide access to all existing studies on ecosystem valuation, financing and cost-benefit analysis and stimulate development of new studies and partnerships. Depending on funding, a Case Study coordinator should be appointed who can actively search for case study-literature, engage Network members to actively share and discuss experiences on past case studies and develop joint tenders to find financial support for development of new case studies.

Guidelines for decision-makers. Parallel to the development of scientific knowledge, the coordination is committed to ensure timely and correct adoption of methodologies by decision- and policy-makers. One of the network’s activities will be the active screening, testing and improving or developing of valuation guidelines, financing instruments and tools for more balanced cost-benefit analysis that can serve the needs of end users in an optimal way. Closely related to this activity is the research and development of appropriately customized user interfaces to coordination-endorsed data retrieval and method access tools to make the practice ESV as intuitive as possible for specific classes of users.

Certification activity. The coordination should develop certification guidelines and formal criteria for consultants and practitioners that subscribe to the MOU. The coordination could simply provide guidelines and criteria for certification, or serve as a certifying agency directly. This activity would be instrumental in guaranteeing the reliability and integrity of commercial ESV providers. Such providers could pay a subscription fee that goes towards long-term funding of the coordination, and could be waived entirely or in part if consultants provide data and methods developed or run a host node.

Sponsored activities. The coordination can sponsor activities relevant to its mission, such as:

	ES data collection in specific thematic and geographic areas;
	Research in methodologies to map ecological function into ES provision, allowing projection of ES and their economic values in relationship to global change and natural catastrophes;
	Research, development and testing of ES valuation methods;
	Training workshops for governmental partners and NGOs in developed and developing countries;
	Training workshops for commercial companies.

Sponsoring of such activities can happen through endorsement and recommendation, help in selection of funding agencies, creation of test platforms and focus groups, provision of software, collaboration infrastructure, and meeting space, co-advising of students, provision of venues for presentation of results. The coordination’s endorsement would guarantee visibility of activities or products. According to the financial model adopted, sponsoring could also happen directly through research funds granted by the coordination itself.

Thematic areas. Concentrations of experts and practitioners relative to specific thematic or geographic/biogeographic areas (such as oceans, biodiversity hotspots, agricultural systems) would allow efficient, focused and capillary activity. Such concentrations could be proposed and coordinated by qualified partner with the endorsement of the governing board.

The coordination will maintain a shared web presence giving access to both public and private sections. An interactive website has been launched in November 2004 (http://www.naturevaluation.org) that provides access to publications, case studies, data bases, meetings, and organisations on three main topics: Valuation, Financing and Decision-support Instruments (esp. Cost-benefit Analysis). The areas of the current web site include:

Discussions. The website provides access to a bulletin and discussion platform for the efficient exchange of information and opinions as well information regarding meetings and conferences among Network members. Thematic Discussion Groups will be formed (on Valuation, Financing and Cost-Benefit Analysis), drawn from the network membership.

Education. The education and outreach sections includes examples of curricula on ecosystem valuation, financing, and cost-benefit analysis. The activities carried out by the different participant nodes will result in the development of educational packages and training workshops to be posted on the website.

Data Clearinghouse. The website provides access to the Ecosystem Services Database, an advanced search engine and repository of bibliographic information, economic values, aggregated economic measures of ecosystem services, and methodological protocols. Data and methods submitted by participants to the coordination will be stored in the ESD for participant and/or public access.

The coordination’s website will expand on this model to provide access to the state of the art in ESV both from the research and application points of view. Each user role (Table 2) will correspond to separate areas of the site where the correspondent software toolkits and their documentation will be available for download.

The coordination is composed of partner institutions and individuals, representing different classes of users, scholars, and practitioners of ecosystem services valuation. At the “Planning the Network” meeting, participants will define the governance model, a financial model and a strategic plan.

All partners are signers of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) whose contents specify:

	GOALS: the higher purpose, scale, and character of the initiative, defining reference criteria for openness, quality and equity, and stating the ultimate goal of enabling correct, fair, reproducible and certifiable ESV.
	COMMITTMENTS in terms of open access and intellectual property rights, laying out rights and responsibilities relative to the distribution and use of knowledge.
	RESPONSIBILITIES of participants in terms of roles and contributions, laying out criteria for quality, legitimacy, and relevance of produced content, as well as modalities of technology transfer and obligations towards participants from developing countries.

The MOU also defines administrative details including the governance structure, the location and management model for the host secretariat, the legal status and measures of accountability, the funding model, and provides all key definitions. The MOU is not legally binding, but compliance with its terms is a requirement for continued partnership.

Participants belong to different classes based on their institutional status and stated mission in ESV. The details of their participation are specified by adopting one or more of a set of predefined roles. Each participant sends one member to the governing board and can participate with one or more members to any of the operational boards and committees (Section 4). Not for profit participants and for-profit participants in good standing can advertise their status in the coordination for granting or promotional purposes.

Classes of participation. The class of a participant may define the access rules and the modalities of its financial involvement. Table 1 details the participant classes envisioned by the proponents.

For governmental and academic participants, participation ensures the maximum access to data and timeliness of transfer of research results, as well as providing privileged opportunities for collaboration. In the case of for-profit participants, such as consultants marketing ESV services, participation is an investment that ensures a voice in the definition and adoption of quality standards and protocols for ESV, in accordance with the MOU, and the right to use the coordination’s brand of recognition when promoting its services. The proponents envision for-profit participation as fee-based, with options of waiving some of the participation fees if the agreement includes regular provision of data, services, or training for purposes consistent with those of the coordination. For all participants, compliance with the MOU’s terms is required for continued participation and is subject to periodic review.

Roles of participation. The role of a participant defines the services accessed and the contribution offered by the participant to the coordination. Roles are complementary and not mutually exclusive: each participant can have one or more of the roles described in Table 2.

Participants enacting any of the contributing roles (data provider, method provider and host) would have the status of contributing partners, which may be linked to voting rights in the governing board. Each of the roles above is supported by a correspondent software toolkit developed and provided by the coordination, as detailed in Section 5.

Public access. The proponents envision a liberal policy of public access to knowledge coordinated by the initiative, through appropriate web interfaces accessible to non-participants for education and research. The end-user toolkits should be open source and freely downloadable. On the other hand, they should support authentication to enable enforcement of proper use of the coordination’s brand of recognition in distributing or marketing ESV knowledge and services.

Organigram of the proposed coordination

The proponents envision the coordination as having a governing board composed of representatives of all partners and a high-level, external advisory board. The MOU contains rules to guarantee fair representation of all partners in the governing board. In addition to the main governing structure, the following identities should be recognizable in the coordination:

	A scientific board, in charge of the peer review process for prospective contributing partners, data repositories and submitted data, for the selection of case studies and the development of certification guidelines for methods, practices and institutions.
	A user board, evaluating the ultimate performance of the coordination in terms of quality, usability of the products, and success of the approach. The user board, composed of members indicated by participants and extendible to external users upon recommendation by partners, would provide feedback to all other boards and be the key driver of the coordination’s strategic plan.

All boards would meet at regular intervals. A Coordination and Management team would be the executive arm of the governing board, coordinating activities among three Steering Committees:

	Data management. In charge of defining and endorsing data protocols, quality standards, classifications, and integration guidelines.
	Methods. Collects advice from the scientific board, defines and endorses valuation protocols and methods that can de made available to users.
	Outreach and Coordination. Coordinates and defines educational activities, workshops, annual conference, newsletter, and journal.

Finally, three teams would be responsible for ESV-related operation, infrastructure development and maintenance, and outreach, as described below:

Technical team. Given the central role of IT in the operation of the coordination (Section 5), a stable technical team should be part of its organizational structure. The technical team is in charge of:

	developing and maintaining the infrastructural backbone and end-user toolkits;
	proposing and enforcing the adoption of technical standards;
	developing and supporting end-user interfaces;
	coordinating the development, communication and maintenance of the knowledge base (see Section 5).

ESV research and assessment team. The coordination relies on this technical team to handle data submitted to it, maintain guidelines and protocols for ESV, evaluate interfaces and databases for content, and implement quality control protocols, and give feedback to the technical team for issues of usability and effectiveness of the software toolkits.

Outreach team. This team is in charge of implementing the recommendations of the outreach steering committee, by updating the central web site regarding events, data and publication releases, organizing events, and publishing a newsletter.

Openness of data and full interoperability between data and ESV methods are a prerequisite for the success of the initiative, and can only be attained through a well-defined technical infrastructure based on established standards. The proponents, part of a wider ecoinformatics network [8], envision a distributed network of participants that host coordinated data and method repositories, and a central technical operation that maintains a registry of providers and creates, maintains and distributes software infrastructure to support coordinated access, use and quality control. More specifically:

	A centralized technical facility would provide the main Web presence and maintain a registry service for the uniform location of data and method providers. The search and retrieval toolkit would use the registry to locate online providers, dispatch request to them, and merge results. This architecture employs web services technology and universal identifiers for all data and methods.
	End-user toolkits, developed by the central technical facility, implement well-defined roles for the participants (Table 2). In most cases, a toolkit is a “turn-key” product that is installed by the participant on a networked computer and gives immediate access to the functions relative to the role implemented.
	Hosting of data nodes: participants that already maintain ESV-relevant databases and hold invested capital in the production of knowledge would retain control of their content and technologies. The technical facility would assist these participants in implementing a web service layer for of their data bases, to make their content a seamless part of the coordination’s network.
	The coordination would endorse accepted standards for the representation of data, metadata and algorithmic specifications of methods, and ensure interoperability with the products of related activities in biodiversity, ecology such as GBIF [9], SEEK [10]. Recognized universal identifiers, such as Life Science IDentifiers (LSID), would be used for all content.
	Coordination-endorsed ESV methods, used to produce values from raw data and perform benefits transfer studies, are specified in declarative form and stored, retrieved and updated by method providers, the same way as data. In addition, the coordination maintains a shared repository of formalized conceptualizations (ontologies) that provides a knowledge base used to ensure the proper use of data within methods, their correct aggregation and their methodological consistency. Such knowledge base defines the admissible operations and sets consistency constraints that allow method users to perform complex operations like benefits transfer without the need of expert supervision.
	Recognizing the need for end-user interfaces customized for specific classes of users, the coordination would ensure the separation of the interface layer from the toolkit functionalities, and provide a user interface development toolkit so that users wishing to do so would be able to develop custom interfaces for specialized classes of users or customers. An interface committee would keep track of existing interfaces and their effectiveness, regularly revising interface guidelines to guide development for specific classes of users, such as NGOs and governmental organizations.

Feedback relative to this document should be sent by electronic mail to ecoinformatics@uvm.edu, or at the following mail address:

Ferdinando Villa

Gund Institute for Ecological Economics

University of Vermont

617 Main Street

Burlington, VT 05405

United States of America