In view of the internal relations among the chapters, this chapter should be read closely with the chapter on "Food Security and Livelihood".
Column 4.5 Ecosystem Service Function ①
In 2005, the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) project formally put forward the concept and definition of ecosystem service G, and divided the service functions of the ecosystem into four categories: supply functions, such as providing food and drinking water; Regulatory functions, such as climate regulation and disease control; Supporting functions, such as maintaining nutrient circulation and crop pollination in the living environment; Cultural functions, such as meeting people's spiritual needs and providing entertainment and leisure places. The service function of ecosystem is embodied in purifying sewage, regulating river flow and groundwater level, preventing and controlling pests and diseases, helping plants pollinate, maintaining soil fertility and ensuring human health.
At present, people's understanding of ecosystem service function is not enough, and the important role of ecosystem service function in economic market, government decision-making and land management has not been fully exerted. Therefore, the ecosystem and its service function are deteriorating.
Source: ① Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, Ecosystem and Human Well-being: An Assessment Framework. Location :http://www.maweb.org/documents/document.48.aspx.pdf.
② Ecosystem services. What is an ecosystem service? [online] see: http://www.ecosystemserviceproject.org/html/overview/index.htm.
the answer to the question
Protecting, maintaining and improving the state of natural resources is of great significance to the world ecosystem, and the sustainable management method of natural resources is also crucial to give full play to the function of ecosystems in providing services for people and children of different sexes. Only a healthy earth can meet the basic survival needs of human beings (such as water, food and shelter) and help improve the quality of human life. Due to the blind pursuit of short-term economic benefits, food security may be considered in the rapid economic growth, but environmental protection is usually ignored, and there are countless examples of natural environment degradation or destruction. A typical example is that Indonesia's virgin forest was cut down and planted with commercial oil palm, which earned huge wealth for multinational companies. However, the indigenous people who have long relied on forest resources for survival were forced to move and the natural habitat of orangutans was destroyed. The deterioration of soil and land environment caused by single cropping system is also a typical case.
With the increasing impact of climate change on the ecosystem (Box 4.6), it is urgent to protect, restore and improve the global natural environment. The relationship between disaster G and natural resources management is complex, and the interaction between disaster G and environmental degradation is gradually intensifying. Good natural resource management can not only help the ecosystem adapt to climate change, but also slow down the serious impact of climate disasters and greatly reduce carbon emissions.
Many cases show that reasonable natural resources management can reduce the risk of climate disasters and give consideration to friendly environmental and ecological benefits. In Vietnam, the cost of planting and protecting12,000 hectares of mangroves is about10,000 US dollars, but the cost of seawall maintenance is reduced by about 7.3 million US dollars every year.
Box 4.6 Relationships among natural resources, ecosystem services, climate change and disasters
Fragile management of natural resources
Soil erosion caused by cutting down trees
River siltation caused by deforestation and farmland soil erosion caused floods.
Farmland degradation caused by increased rainfall and soil erosion
The increase of industrial water consumption triggered agricultural drought.
Continuous soil degradation leads to agricultural drought, which reduces soil water retention and water capacity.
A single plant species destroys biodiversity.
Social development (such as urban air and water pollution) brings great pressure to the ecosystem.
Disasters and their effects
Strong winds or heavy precipitation will destroy crops and erode the top soil.
Floods and soil supersaturation cause vegetation loss.
Forest fires kill wild animals and destroy their habitats.
A large number of temporary settlements (such as refugee camps) degrade natural resources (forests, water).
Impact of climate change
Rising temperatures have destroyed coral reefs and fish habitats and breeding grounds.
Sea level rise leads to seawater intrusion and pollutes fresh water sources.
Rising temperature, habitat destruction and rising sea water temperature lead to the loss of biodiversity, including mass extinction.
The increase of temperature and the decrease of annual rainfall accelerate the desertification process of forests and grasslands.
Sea level rise inundates coastal cities and farmland.
The problems faced by the natural environment mainly come from the pressure of climate change, environmental deterioration, economic growth and overpopulation, mainly including the following aspects:
Land and soil: Fertile soil is the result of natural evolution of ecological environment, and a healthy ecosystem can maintain good forest quality, vegetation coverage, soil fertility and biodiversity. In the past 40 years, wind erosion and water erosion have caused 30% of cultivated land degradation in the world. About 60% of eroded soil flows into rivers, streams and lakes, blocking waterways, easily causing floods or polluting rivers with fertilizers and pesticides. Human food production depends on cultivated land, so sustainable land resource management is very important.
Forests: grasslands, wetlands and forests directly provide material resources for billions of poor women and children, including wood, firewood, fiber, medicine and food. Affected by logging, large dam construction, mining and industrial development, forests are suffering unprecedented damage and continue to degrade at an extremely fast rate, with the annual deforestation rate reaching130,000 hectares.
Water: Due to over-exploitation and utilization, water resources have become one of the scarcest natural resources in the world. By 2030, 47% of the world's population will live in water-deficient areas; By 2050, the global water shortage will reach 50%. Climate change intensifies the changes of water resources (such as more floods and droughts), and this situation will continue to deteriorate with the increase of temperature.
Fisheries: About 75% of the world's marine fish are overexploited and utilized due to overfishing and the degradation of coastal, marine and freshwater ecosystems and habitats. Under man-made destruction or natural interference (such as adverse climatic conditions, pollution and disease outbreaks), over-exploitation has seriously affected the sustainable development of fisheries, and the recovery ability of fisheries has also been seriously damaged. 53. The increase of seawater temperature will further aggravate seawater acidification, so fishery resources will be under greater pressure.
Biodiversity: The loss of biodiversity is a gradual and imperceptible process. Some scientists estimate that the destruction of habitat leads to the extinction of about 100 species on the earth every day, and more than14 species will face extinction in the next 40 years. Protecting biodiversity (such as the protection of natural land, fresh water and marine ecosystems and the restoration of degraded ecosystems) is very important, because it not only plays a key role in global carbon cycle and adaptation to climate change, but also brings great benefits to mankind and provides important ecological services for the development of human society.
Box 4.7 Examples of effective natural resource management
Sustainable water resources management: monitoring and managing vegetation in river basins, soil aquifers, alluvial plains and their adjacent areas, so as to play the role of hidden water sources and flood control.
Restoration and improvement of coastal habitats: Mangroves can effectively resist storm surges, seawater intrusion and coastal erosion.
Grassland and pasture management: take appropriate measures to promote the growth of pasture, improve the resilience of pastoral areas to drought and flood disasters, restore the productivity of pastoral areas, and promote the sustainable development of grassland and pastoral areas.
Establishing diversified agro-ecosystems: maintaining the biodiversity of local native crops and livestock and maintaining the diversity of agricultural landscapes can maintain the diversity of agro-ecosystems and contribute to local food security under climate change conditions.
Strategic management of shrubs and forests: controlling the frequency and area of forest fires.
Establish an effective management system of protected areas: ensure that protected areas can continuously play the service function of ecosystems and improve the resilience of ecosystems to climate change.
Protection and restoration of forest land: reducing soil erosion is beneficial to forest land to play its water storage function.
Maintain agricultural biodiversity: provide specific gene banks for crops and livestock to adapt to climate change.
Farmers' management method of recycling natural resources: selectively retaining and pruning branches of local trees and shrubs to increase crop yield, feed yield and firewood quantity in degraded drylands (this method is particularly successful in West African countries).
Community forest management system: under the official authorization, formulate standardized community forest management plans to promote the sustainable productivity of non-fast-growing forests. Forest management provides local natural resources for survival, protects the integrity and biodiversity of forest canopy, helps forest ecosystem play a role in regulating microclimate and increases carbon capture.
10 application guide of integrated disaster risk management and climate change adaptation principles in the field of natural resources management
Case Study: Paul Hu Community-based Natural Resources Regeneration Project 55
Project implementation place: Ethiopia
Project implementer: World Vision
In the high-altitude Ethiopian Paul Hu area, the local forest ecosystem has been seriously degraded, and soil erosion is also very serious, often suffering from persistent drought, inconvenient transportation and rugged mountain roads. In order to solve the problems of poverty, hunger and increasing demand for agricultural land, local residents have overexploited forest resources, which have threatened the local groundwater safety and led to the reduction of groundwater level and reserves. Climate change may aggravate the vulnerability and poverty of the region to natural disasters. One of the characteristics of local climate change is the intensification of precipitation, which will lead to soil erosion and increase the risk of persistent drought, while the livelihood of local residents depends heavily on agriculture. Frequent droughts and floods will affect the family income and wealth accumulation of local residents, make people fall into poverty and lose confidence in a better life in the future.
In 2005, World Vision began to carry out natural resource regeneration projects by transplanting exotic living trees. This method can promote the sustainable development of the project area, and it belongs to the method of sustainable development, just like new financial support methods such as clean development mechanism (CDM). The clean development mechanism established under the framework of Kyoto Protocol allows afforestation and reforestation projects to trade carbon sequestration or absorption of forests, convert carbon sequestration of forests into carbon dioxide equivalent, and obtain equivalent carbon credits.
After two years' efforts, World Vision has been in constant communication with all levels of institutions in Paul Hu (federal, regional, regional and district-level government agencies, and later became the promoters and executors of the project), designed the implementation plan of the project, and finally formed a community-based natural resource regeneration project plan, which became the first carbon trading project of the clean development mechanism of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) in Ethiopia. Because of the concern about the relationship between forest protection and livelihood, the project has achieved the dual benefits of mitigating climate change and reducing poverty through vegetation restoration.
The project adopts the farmer-managed natural resource recovery (FMNR)G method developed by World Vision, aiming at improving the resilience of the community and restoring and improving the local natural environment, which embodies the principle of "harmlessness". In this project, the traditional seedling raising method is replaced by exotic live trees, which is more beneficial than the traditional method. As a supplement to this method, the nursery cultivates more than 450 thousand seedlings every year to restore the bare land of the secondary forest without tree residue. In order to enrich the biodiversity of forest ecosystem, the project selected some local tree species and restored 2728 hectares of forest. As a "carbon sink", forests not only slow down climate change, but also improve the resilience of environment, society and economy to future climate change. In the process of implementing the method of recycling natural resources managed by farmers, the staff popularized the knowledge of forest ownership and management rights and more complex sustainable production systems to indigenous people, which promoted the local adaptive capacity building.
The indigenous people who participated in the project formed seven groups in villages to manage and protect the regenerated forests, and the staff of World Vision provided technical and capacity-building training to the members of the groups. The project staff also made many attempts in training carbon trading knowledge, vividly explained the meaning of carbon sink with charts and media broadcasts, helped indigenous people understand the basic concepts of carbon sink and carbon sink, and answered their questions.
On the basis of insisting on promoting system participation and change and following the principle of "no harm", this project will surely achieve long-term benefits of reducing poverty and improving the ability of natural resource management system to cope with climate change. One year after the implementation of the project, the local forest vegetation has been rapidly updated. Four years later, through sustainable management, 2,728 hectares of felled and degraded timber, firewood and fodder forests have been effectively restored. It is estimated that in the next 30 years, these forests will fix more than 870,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere, which will not only help to slow down climate change, but also provide new sources of income for local rural cooperative organizations.
Community-led sustainable management of forest restoration has brought many benefits to the local area: ① the restoration of forest vegetation has increased the supply of wood, which can improve the variety and output of forest products, including honey, medicine, fiber products, fruits and wild animals, and increase the income of residents; (2) The new land management mode has promoted the growth of forage grass and provided sufficient feed for livestock, at the same time, cutting and selling forage grass has become a new source of income; ③ Afforestation and reforestation reduced land degradation and soil erosion.
Tools and resources
For more information and links, please see the Tools and Resources page 134.