Ecosystem Services and Federal Public Lands: Start-up Policy Questions and Research Needs

Ruhl_final_2.doc 7/17/2010 12:26:41 PM ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND FEDERAL PUBLIC LANDS: START-UP POLICY QUESTIONS AND RESEARCH NEEDS J.B. RUHL* INTRODUCTION FOR SALE Ecosystem Services From 650 Million Acres Contact Secretary of Interior or Agriculture Today! It’s unlikely you’ll ever see a sign like this posted in front of the Department of Interior or Department of Agriculture buildings, but it is clear the federal government has come to the realization that it is sitting on a potentially vast repository of economic value in the form of ecosystem services from federal public lands. Ecosystem services are the economic benefits humans derive from the ecosystem structure and processes that form what might be thought of as natural * Matthews & Hawkins Professor of Property, The Florida State University College of Law, Tallahassee, Florida. I am thankful to the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum for inviting me to participate in its 2009 symposium, Next Generation Conservation: The Government's Role in Emerging Ecosystem Service Markets, and for publishing this summary of my presentation and my notes from the panel on which I appeared. I also thank my fellow panelists and the panel moderator, Jim Salzman, for the valuable exchange we were able to achieve at the conference. I apologize for the frequent reference to other work of mine to elaborate what is said in the text. I do so only to provide annotations to my conference summary that lead to references by work of many others, not to suggest that my body of work on ecosystem services is the exclusive resource. Please direct any comments or questions to . 275 Ruhl_final_2.doc 276 7/17/2010 12:26:41 PM DUKE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY FORUM [Vol. 20:275 1 capital. Ecosystem services flow to human communities in four streams: (1) provisioning services are commodities such as food, wood, fiber, and water; (2) regulating services moderate or control environmental conditions, such as flood control by wetlands, water purification by aquifers, and carbon sequestration by forests; (3) cultural services include recreation, education, and aesthetics; and (4) supporting services, such as nutrient cycling, soil formation, and primary production, make the previous three service streams 2 possible. It makes sense that the federal government as the largest 3 landowner in the nation, would begin to consider as a policy matter how it might manage the flow of ecosystem services on and off of its landholdings; yet it has only recently begun to do so in a coherent 4 policy framework. Ecologists and economists have been forging the theory and application of the ecosystem services concept since the 1. Ecosystem services are economically valuable benefits humans derive from ecological resources directly, such as storm surge mitigation provided by coastal dunes and marshes, and indirectly, such as nutrient cycling that supports crop production. Natural capital consists of the ecological resources that produce these service values, such as forests, riparian habitat, and wetlands. For descriptions of natural capital and ecosystem services, see MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT, ECOSYSTEMS AND HUMAN WELL-BEING: SYNTHESIS (2005), available at http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf; NATURE’S SERVICES: SOCIETAL DEPENDENCE ON NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS (Gretchen C. Daily ed. 1997) [hereinafter NATURE’S SERVICES]; Robert Costanza et al., The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital, 387 NATURE 253 (1997). For coverage of the emergence of the ecosystem services concept in law and policy, see J.B. RUHL, STEVEN E. KRAFT & CHRISTOPHER L. LANT, THE LAW AND POLICY OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (Island Press 2007) [hereinafter LAW AND POLICY]; J.B. Ruhl & James Salzman, The Law and Policy Beginnings of Ecosystem Services, 22 J. LAND USE & ENVTL. L. 157 (2007) [hereinafter Law and Policy Beginnings]; James Salzman, A Field of Green? The Past and Future of Ecosystem Services, 21 J. LAND USE AND ENVTL. L. 133 (2006). 2. This typology of ecosystem services is developed in MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT, supra note 1, at vi. 3. “The federal government owns about 30 percent of the nation’s total surface area (about 650 million acres). Four major federal land management agencies—the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service—are responsible for managing about 95 percent of these lands. The Department of Defense manages most of the remainder.” U.S. GEN. ACCOUNTING OFFICE, RCED-96-40, LAND OWNERSHIP: INFORMATION ON THE ACREAGE, MANAGEMENT, AND USE OF FEDERAL AND OTHER LANDS 2 (1996) [hereinafter LAND OWNERSHIP]. 4. I should add that, of course, important ecosystem services flow within and from the marine environment over which the federal government has dominion. See Charles H. Paterson & Jane Lubcheco, Marine Ecosystem Services, in NATURE’S SERVICES, supra note 1, at 215. My focus is on the federal government’s inland holdings and their associated resources. Coastal regions, which fit my focus, also are tremendous sources of ecosystem services. See Elise F. Granek et al., Ecosystem Services as a Common Language for Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management, 24 CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 207 (2010). Ruhl_final_2.doc 7/17/2010 12:26:41 PM Summer 2010] ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: FEDERAL PUBLIC LANDS 277 5 mid-1990s, but only in the past few years has the concept begun to 6 register in federal public lands policy in any meaningful way. This Essay, based on my presentation at Duke Law School’s 2009 symposium, Next Generation Conservation: The Government’s Role in 7 Emerging Ecosystem Service Markets, briefly examines this emerging policy front and proposes a set of key policy questions, research needs, and options for building on the policy work that has been done to date. Part I outlines the basic context for thinking about the role federal public lands might play in the management of ecosystem services, and why using the ecosystem services concept in public land policy is worth considering. Part II proposes several key research paths that must be addressed before federal lands can be managed effectively for ecosystem service flows. Part III bears down on the different roles federal lands might play in promoting or participating in markets for ecosystem services. My goal is not to propose any particular policy for federal lands and ecosystem services, but rather to suggest how federal public land management agencies should go about formulating and implementing such policies. Who knows, someday the cry might be “there’s ecosystem services in them thar 8 hills,” in which case the federal government should have a plan for how we get to them. I. KEY THRESHOLD CONSIDERATIONS Three disciplines merge at the core of the concept of ecosystem services: ecology, to understand the ecological structures and processes that produce and deliver ecosystem services; economics, to understand how those deliv (...truncated)