I appreciate that the question of resource dependency and resource scarcity is becoming a major issue in the political debate. However I am slightly concerned that environmental issues like biodiversity and ecosystem services are narrowed down to purely economic issues and that thereby the ecological dimensions and the social implications may be weakened. For example the focus of the European research program HORIZON 2020 which acknowledges biodiversity only as a subtopic of resource efficiency, not as a topic in itself. Social and ecological issues are thus under threat of being reframed and addressed in a narrow sense.
I am working particularly on land use, biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this area a lot of tradeoffs and conflicts will emerge due to the scarcity of natural resources. My major concern is about the interests of weaker actors, mostly what we call local and indigenouos people, and their opportunitiesto beacknowledged and involved as important stakeholders in this debate. The question is how to improve the participation and the relevance of their perspectives. This is closely related to question of ecosystems services and the resilience ofecosystems.
Professor University Kassel
Head of Dep. Environmental Politics
Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research
My contact: christoph.goerg@ufz.de
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