The Paradox Introduced: Concepts and Cases

To recapitulate, the hard paradox is this: how do you improve ecological functions and related human services at the same time, if not everywhere then at least over the ecosystem and landscape as a whole? How do decision makers meet the twofold recoupling goal: (1) where they are managing for reliable ecosystem services, they would also be improving the associated ecosystem functions, and/or (2) where they are managing for improved ecosystem functions, they would also be better ensuring the reliability of the ecosystem services associated with those functions. In short, how do decision makers recouple ecosystem functions and services that over time have been decoupled to their detriment? A set of terms have just been introduced that require explanation. The terms “recoupling,” “decoupling,” and, by implication, “coupling” are central to the arguments of our book and are formalized more fully in later chapters. (The controversial terms, “functions” and “services,” are discussed in the next section.) Basically, the literature uses the former terms to refer to biophysical connections, organizational connections, or both. An example of the first is Ausubel (1996, pp. 1, 7, 8), who notes that agricultural modernization has meant “food decoupled from acreage” through the production of more crops on less land. Advances in science and technology “increasingly decouple our goods and services from the demands on planetary resources.” Ausubel adds that we can expect “further decoupling [of] food from land. For more green occupations, today’s farmers might become tomorrow’s park rangers and ecosystem guardians. In any case, the rising yields, spatial contraction of agriculture, and sparing of land are a powerful antidote to the current losses of biodiversity and related environmental ills.” Opschoor (1995) speaks of a similar technological phenomenon, “delinking,” where rising incomes are decoupled over time from intensive material use. Also, the third Dutch national environmental policy plan seeks as one of its goals the decoupling of economic growth from environmental pollution (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment 1998). These uses of “decoupling” all refer to the relation between services and environmental degradation. We, on the other hand, are talking about the relation between services and environmental assets, that is, ecosystem functions.