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Identifying key stakeholders for an Ecosystem Services (IES) system (adopted from the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, IFAD).
Beyond general scoping, in any IES system, it is important to identify and consult with key stakeholders, including specific producers and consumers of ecosystem service(s). It is important to understand the motivations, limitations and needs of each stakeholder group. This may occur through discussions with key informants, analysis of existing documents, and research on policy and tenure rights.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page: www.grida.no/resources/12618
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Nieves Lopez Izquierdo
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
The resilience has become a prominent aspect of management and research due to their extensive provision of ecosystem services and their vulnerability to multiple threats. The scientific understanding of the drivers underpinning seagrass resilience has advanced rapidly in recent years. Factors shown to be important can be categorized in terms of whether they are characteristics of the meadow itself or the surrounding environment, either biological or biophysical.
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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Hisham Ashkar and Petter Sevaldsen
18 February 2020, A Robust Innovation Ecosystem for the Future of Europe
Belgium - Brussels - February 2020
© European Union/ Nuno Rodrigues
Karina ANGELIEVA, Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Republic of Bulgaria
Exotic species that was imported with the slave trade. The whole population is believed to be the offspring of one single pregnant female . Nothin like a little incest- the population is estimated to be about 2000 and going strong.
Pinar Yoldas
An Ecosystem of Excess
Aksioma Project Space
Komenskega 18, Ljubljana
February 12 - March 28, 2014
Production: Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2014
Photo: Janez Janša
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
WARNING-Graphic Hyper Violence within!!!!!
Notice - SKAM does not endorse the killing of oneself or others. SKAM endorses an open communication about the damage humans have done to our planet.
The Recycle Yourself Project is meant to invoke an emotion and discussion about such issues as Overpopulation, Pollution, Ecosystem Destruction Humans responsibility to the Environment, Culture Jamming, Art intervention and Anti-Commercialism/over-consumption.
The Recycle Yourself Philosophy
For billions of years the earth has recycled the life that has existed on it. Through a natural cycle. At one time the Human race followed that natural cycle.
The humans lived hand and hand with the environment taking and giving back to the land. Even after death humans at one time gave their actual bodies back to the planet to decay in a natural way. Over time mankind has forgotten about our beautiful planet and how it created the life that exists on it. Then comes the age of the industrial revolution and corporations built upon mass consumerism. Marketing companies assault us ever day. By the time you are 5 years old you've already had 200,000 images planted into your brain from television and ad campaigns.
This false reality is built and constructed into our minds to appear that if its sold on tv there is an unlimited supply. Buy buy buy this constructed ads tell us that there is nothing wrong with this behavior. The status quo is a false reality.
The real reality
Humans have already started what will be known as the 6th mass extinction on our planet. This has been created by the abuse we've done in the last 300 years to our mother earth.
The western mindset has infected the entire planet. Kill, rape and pillage, give nothing back. Even in death humans turn themselves in plastic wrapped corspe's that seep poisons into the ground that in turn effect our drinking water. Cancer, disease, and viruses are a by-product of our planet trying to control this over consumerism culture. Mother earth will win this war in the end but it will be at the expense of all forms of life on our planet. Education is the only thing that will change this behavior. If you want to climb the mountain you don't just jump to the top. This change needs to happen in steps. The first is being aware of such steps. If humans so selfishly ignore these warning signs. Some day there will be no fish in the sea, no birds in the sky, no whales in the ocean, no dogs to follow their masters, no flowers to bloom, no bees to pollinate them. This is a reality.
Now you have to ask yourself?
Do you want to be responsible for a dead planet?
Educate
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle Yourself!
August 30, 2019 - The following text is from LMN (the architect's) website: lmnarchitects.com/project/vancouver-convention-centre-west
Vision
The world’s first LEED Platinum convention center, Vancouver Convention Centre West fully integrates the urban ecosystem at the intersection of a vibrant downtown core and one of the most spectacular natural ecosystems in North America. The culmination of two decades of planning and redevelopment for its waterfront neighborhood, the project weaves together architecture, interior architecture, and urban design in a unified whole that functions literally as a living part of both the city and the harbor.
Site and Program
The extensive and complex program encompasses at once a single building and a new urban district. Occupying a former brownfield site on the downtown waterfront, the development is approximately 14 acres on land and 8 acres over water, with 1 million square feet of convention space, 90,000 square feet of retail space, 450 parking stalls, and 400,000 square feet of walkways, bikeways, public open space, and plazas. The public realm extends through and around the site including a waterfront promenade featuring restaurants, retail storefronts, and public art, while infrastructure for future development extends into the water. An integrated float plane terminal provides undoubtedly the most spectacular way of arriving at the facility. At the center of the public realm, the project’s Jack Poole Plaza is the city’s first major gathering space on the water’s edge, and the permanent home of the 2010 Olympic Torch.
Design
The architectural approach creates a community experience that is simultaneously a building, an urban plaza, a park, and an ecosystem. The convention center program emphasizes spaces for both public and private events, gatherings, and circulation, mixing the energy of convention visitors with the life of the city. The building’s landforms fold in specific ways to embrace the downtown street grid and preserve view corridors out to the water. The entire perimeter enclosure is an ultra-clear glass system, visually reinforcing the integration of urban and waterfront context into the user experience of the building.
The iconic living roof, visible from throughout the city, forms the terminus of a chain of waterfront parks that rings the harbor and creates continuous stepping-stone habitat between the convention center and Stanley Park. Less visible but equally productive, an artificial concrete reef drops below the waterfront promenade, designed in collaboration with marine biologists to restore the ecology of the natural shoreline.
The building’s landforms create a topographical experience on the interior. Materiality is based around the use of indigenous British Columbia wood, expressed in the strong directional lines of the ceiling plane as well as wall cladding that simulates the texture of stacks of lumber. The interior is constantly connected to daylight and views, setting up an extroverted, community-friendly relationship with the exterior and connecting the interior experience with the life of the city and the waterfront. Transparency serves as an orienting device for users in the facility, anchoring each space to the unique views available from its vantage point. By night, the lit interior creates an urban lantern at the water’s edge.
Sustainability
The most visible evidence of the project’s deep approach to ecology is its living roof—at 6 acres it is the largest in Canada, hosting some 400,000 indigenous plants and 240,000 bees in 4 colonies that provide honey for the convention center restaurant. The roof’s sloping forms build on the topography of the region, creating a formal as well as ecological connection to nearby Stanley Park and the North Shore Mountains in view across the Burrard Inlet. The slopes set up natural drainage and seed migration patterns for the roof’s ecology. The roof has no public access points, allowing it to develop as a fully functional habitat for migrating wildlife, while the landforms fold to allow views onto the lush vegetation from inside and outside the building.
Some 35% of the project is built on piles over the water, surrounded by a custom-designed marine habitat skirt consisting of 5 concrete tiers that provide rocky surfaces for marine life to attach. Each tier supports a separate set of biota depending on the water depth, forming a complete shoreline ecosystem including salmon, crabs, starfish, shellfish, and dozens of other native species. Runnels built into the tide flats beneath the building create additional tidal habitats that flush daily.
The internal metabolism of the building draws many of its inputs from the site’s renewable resources. A seawater heat pump system, for example, takes advantage of the constant temperature of seawater to produce cooling for the building during warmer months and heating in cooler months, contributing to a reduction in energy use of 60% over typical convention centers. A water conservation and reuse system reduces potable water use by 70%, including an on-site blackwater treatment plant that cycles all wastewater from the building including stormwater from the living roof, and returns it for irrigation and other gray water needs.
Socially, the project defines an urban district that is the focal point of the downtown waterfront in a city of intense civic involvement and environmental awareness. An early indication of its value to the city is that the building served as the International Broadcast Centre for the 2010 Olympic Games, with the public plaza as the site for the Olympic Torch. Having tripled the city’s convention capacity, the project continues to reap economic benefits for the British Columbia region with record bookings surpassing expectations, and was recently selected as the home of the international TED Conference.
Further detail on the history of the project and all of its sustainability thinking can be found in the LMN case study How Vancouver Greened Its Waterfront.
Many people, myself included, are increasingly interested in understanding these complex ecosystems through the lenses of both science AND what is commonly referred to as "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" or "Indigenous Knowlege". For example, many if not all indigenous cultures recognize the interconnectedness of all things. One of many phrases that sum up this idea is "hishuk ish ts'awalk" which in the language of Nuu-Chah-Nulth peoples on the west coast of Vancouver Island means "everything is one".
The science of ecology increasingly tends to draw the same conclusion. For example, coastal temperate rainforest ecologists such as Dr Tom Reimken have explored the role of salmon in fertilizing the forests that grow adjacent to salmon-bearing watercourses in the fertile valleys of this region. Spawning salmon are caught by bears, wolves and other predators, and dragged into the forest to be consumed. During times of abundance, only the best parts of the salmon are consumed and the rest is left on the forest floor to rot. At large scales, this equates to a significant fertilization of forests, with marine derived nitrogen from the body of the salmon. Other scientists have correlated the annual growth increments in these trees to the strength of that year's salmon run. This has been used to paint a rough picture of the relative abundance of salmon based on tree rings back into the 1700's and beyond. Thus the terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments blur into an interconnected whole.
Depicted here are the bones of a salmon carcass that was so dragged into the forest by a bear or wolf, partially eaten and left. It just so happened that this particular event took place in a river-side graveyard where time-of-contact First Nations peoples were laid to rest. The graveyard in this case has been consumed by a second growth forest. Mosses cling to tombstones which have shifted and tilted in response to the expanding root systems.
A closer inspection of the tombstones indicated that an unusual majority were young children. Their deaths may have been the result of an disease such as small pox. Wave after wave of epidemic diseases such as this decimated Indigenous populations throughout the coast, who had not previously been exposed to them. In some cases, each epidemic successively reduced their populations by 50-75% or more. Often only one or two people from an entire village survived.
Currently, nearly every native language on the BC coast runs a risk of extinction within several generations. Nearly every watershed includes at least one extinct or endangered salmon run, and Grizzlies are considered a "Threatened" species in BC, and have been extirpated over most of their former range in North America.
Forest systems are lands dominated by trees; they are often used for timber, fuelwood, and non-wood forest products. The map shows areas with a canopy cover of at least 40% by woody plants taller than 5 meters.
For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:
This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Philippe Rekacewicz, Emmanuelle Bournay, UNEP/GRID-Arendal
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
2. Free ranging buffaloes grazing in the wetland and waterways created by buffalo trampling
Credits: (c) Cherdsak KUARAKSA
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
ended up trudging a little further through the forest than i had planned to just to get a picture of this dam [which my dude was actually able to walk across despite my telling him not to] but yeah, i just thought it was kinda neat how nature works shit out on its own when its far away from the touch of humans
Terrestrial Research on Ecosystems & World-wide Education & Broadcast || An Innovative Graduate Training Program. The goal of TerreWEB is to create an enriched, innovative, collaborative graduate training environment that addresses key scientific gaps in understanding the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems and developing strategies for mitigation and adaptation, and evaluating the factors underlying global change communication deficits, developing novel communication strategies for addressing these deficits, and measuring the efficacy of those strategies.
For more information, visit terreweb.ubc.ca
The land mass in the Arctic - Greenland and parts of Canada, Alaska, Russia and the Nordic countries - surrounds the Arctic Ocean. In the low Arctic, down to the temperate regions, the taiga coniferous forests represents a vast band of deep forests. North of the taiga, the tundra of the Arctic - with low vegetation, shrubs and various degrees of permafrosts spreads out. Beyond the tundra, there might be barren regions with only rock and few plants. Greenland, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and the northern islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago are covered in ice - glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet.
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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Riccardo Pravettoni
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
The hustle and bustle of Melbourne coupled with Melbourne's biggest ScaleUps. Photos by Tim Carrafa.
HOLANDUCÍA Puerto Banus / The ecosystem consists of a lifechain ranging from wild flowers and mature trees that house and feed the seasons insects who in turn feed the birds, rodents and reptiles (who in turn feed the birds of pray).
80 % of the migrant birds of Northern Europe stop yearly in Andalucia on their way to or from Africa, the most famous resting, breeding and nesting reserve being the Doñana Park in Cadiz. Destroying ths ecosystem (planned by local authorities) would eliminate the natural predators of species we might consider a nuisance and could as a consequence modify the type and quantity of insects or rodents we live with here. As an example, eliminating the frogs who breed in the riverbanks and who feed on mosquitoes and flies would alter the natural balance of the insect colonies. Clearing fields of wild flowers would reduce the amount of caterpillars, butterflies and otherinstects on which the bird colonies are dependent for nesting and feeding. Cutting down trees ( some of considerable age) would destroy the habitat areas of all the mentioned species.
Covering such important surface with cement would alter and rise the local temperatures, since the humidity generated by its present plants cools the hot temperatures by night. This is one of the principles of global warming, but on local scale. This is one of the last such ecosystem in the area. This photo set is to show what we would lose if the area is destroyed by these impending building plans and projects. Proyecto La Herencia aims to raise awareness about the need for protection of this land with its ecosystem and create a debate about how best to do so. Please google the Proyecto La Herencia de Banus / Save Holanducia facebook-group and join our group for support . Thank you so much.
Great job everyone! Thank you to our supporters: Team Rubicon and Wounded Warrior Project, and Mission BBQ for providing a delicious lunch.
Ambyvalley road,Lonavala,Mah.India
The coolest season has set in.Nights bitingly cold...gusty, howling wind blowing from the Himalayas in the north.
28 September 2022 - Panelists in this event discussed how aquatic foods, healthy diets, and nature-based solutions promote a sustainable blue economy and resilient communities.
Healthy marine ecosystems are crucial for the food security and livelihoods of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific. In 2019, ADB launched the Action Plan for Healthy Oceans and Sustainable Blue Economies, which aims to expand support for ocean health and marine economy projects.
Civil society organizations, including nongovernment organizations, play important roles in protecting the ocean. ADB has been collaborating with the WWF to raise awareness about strategic approaches to promote nature-based solutions and blue and aquatic foods.
The event, led by WWF and Worldfish, was held on the sidelines of the 55th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.