The capacities of institutions for the integration of ecosystem services in coastal strategic planning: The case of Jiaozhou Bay

This paper explains how the practice of integrating ecosystem-service thinking (i.e., ecological benefits for human beings) and institutions (i.e., organisations, policy rules) is essential for coastal spatial planning. Adopting an integrated perspective on ecosystem services (ESs) both helps understand a wide range of possible services and, at the same time, attune institution to local resource patterns. The objective of this paper is to identify the extent to which ESs are integrated in a specific coastal strategic planning case. A subsequent objective is to understand whether institutions are capable of managing ESs in terms of uncovering institutional strengths and weaknesses that may exist in taking ESs into account in existing institutional practices. These two questions are addressed through the application of a content analysis method and a multi-level analysis framework on formal institutions. Jiaozhou Bay in China is used as an illustrative case. The results show that some ESs have been implicitly acknowledged, but by no means the whole range. This partial ES implementation could result from any of four institutional weaknesses in the strategic plans of Jiaozhou Bay, namely a dominant market oriented interest, fragmented institutional structures for managing ESs, limited ES assessment, and a lack of integrated reflection of the social value of ESs in decision-making. Finally, generalizations of multi-level institutional settings on ES integration, such as an inter-organisational fragmentation and a limited use of ES assessment in operation, are made together with other international case studies. Meanwhile, the comparison highlights the influences of extensive market-oriented incentives and governments' exclusive responsibilities on ES governance in the Chinese context.

Rules for the governance of coastal and marine ecosystem services: An evaluative framework based on the IAD framework

There is an increasing need for a comprehensive institutional understanding pertaining to ecosystem services (ESs) in coastal and marine fields. This paper develops a systematic framework to inform coastal and marine governance about the integration of ES concepts. First, as a theoretical basis, we analyze the generic rules that are part of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Second, by an extensive literature review, we formulate a set of ES-specific rules and develop an evaluative framework for coastal and marine governance. Third, we examine this evaluative framework in a specific action situation, namely coastal strategic planning concerning Qingdao, China. Results from the literature review and the case study reveal that when designing ES-specific rules for coastal and marine governance, there are several socio-spatial and economic aspects that should be taken into account: (1) conceive of stakeholders as ES users, (2) capture the effect of ecological scaling, (3) understand ES interactions and clarify indirect impacts and causalities, (4) account for ES values, and (5) draw on economic choices for use rights to deal with ES issues.