Nexus thinking – how ecosystem services concepts and practice can contribute balancing integrative resource management through facilitating cross-scale and cross-sectoral planning

Abstract

This special issue (SI) is primarily composed of 12 papers generated from a selection of contributions from two main events. The first event was the biannual conference organized by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) Working Party (Division 8): Forest Landscape Ecology, held in Tartu (Estonia) in 2015, under the theme 'Sustaining Ecosystem Services in Forested Landscapes'. The second event was a symposium organized during the Ecosummit in Montpellier (France) in 2016 under the theme Ecological Sustainability: Engineering Change. The symposium was a joint effort from the EU-funded OpenNESS project, IALE and IUFRO communities, under the theme 'Scenarios and models of key indirect and direct drivers in relation to nature's benefits to people'. These two events have a common ground addressing the use of ecosystem services (ES) in planning and policymaking at different scales. Although the focus of the events, and of this SI, is multi-sectoral, emphasis is given on integrative multifunctional landscape management approaches, with examples mainly from forested landscapes. Besides, this common effort integrates important inputs from the forest cluster of the EU-OpenNESS project (Operationalization of natural capital and ecosystem services) that also participated in the symposia and exchange of ideas and approaches.