ABSTRACT
As the scale of the global economy continues to grow, demands on ecosystems are increasing and there is more evidence of an unprecedented global socio-ecological crises that manifest in diverse but unequivocal ways. Examples of current unsustainable patterns in ecosystem management include the overexploitation of natural resources, (Pauly et al., 2002), deterioration of environmental services (MEA, 2005), climate change (IPCC, 2007) and the loss of biodiversity (Worm et al., 2006). Given societal priorities for continuous economic growth, difficulties are arising in fulfilling demands for multiple ecosystem services. As highlighted in the Introduction, ecosystem management needs to account for the multiple trade-offs across ecosystem services and scales, among beneficiaries and between time periods. Examples that illustrate the unavoidable trade-offs between current patterns of consumption and production and its various ecological impacts are the expansion of oil palm plantations in the tropics (Koh and Wilcove, 2008), international carbon sequestration policies, e.g. REDD+ (Angelsen et al., 2012) and the expansion of other commodity frontiers in the Global South (Gerber, 2011).
