Policy Dimensions of the Ecosystem Services Approach in Hawai‘i (Mark Fox)
Channel: Ronald Cannarella
Date: 07/06/2012

A presentation at the Hawaii Conservation Conference, 2007 in Honolulu, Hawaii by Mark Fox1, Peter Morgan2 (1The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI, 2Stanford University, Stanford, CA) on "Policy Dimensions of the Ecosystem Services Approach in Hawai‘i". Changes in governmental policy - at the local, state, or federal level - will play an important role in connecting the scientific understanding of ecosystem services to public and private decision-making. The vital services provided by natural systems are not fully recognized or valued under existing government policies and, as a result, these services are not adequately considered by public and private entities in making land use and other decisions. Hawai‘i’s ecosystems provide services that could be valued at the global as well as the local scale. In some cases, existing laws and regulations can create perverse incentives that actually hasten the destruction of ecosystems. Policies can be changed to promote the valuation of, and compensation for, ecosystem services in two fundamental ways. Under one approach, laws and regulations can be changed to create a structure in which ecosystem services may be traded on the open market. Such markets already exist in Europe and elsewhere for the service of carbon sequestration. Under another approach, policy makers may choose to provide direct payments to landowners in exchange for the provision of ecosystem services that benefit society in general. This talk will describe the ways in which these approaches can be applied in Hawai‘i, including examples of ongoing and potential efforts to create ecosystem service based incentives for the conservation of private land.

Hawaii Conservation Alliance
Executive Producer: Ronald Cannarella