Ecosystem Services in U.S. Environmental Law and Governance for the Ecosystem-Based Management Practitioner

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of ecosystem services issues in United States (U.S.) law and governance for the Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) practitioner. A brief overview summary of a suite of U.S. federal environmental laws where ecosystems services are relevant is presented along with a high-level overview of ecosystem services in federal and state agency regulations as it helps inform ecosystem-based management. As with the published science-based literature on ecosystem services, there is also a sizeable law-based literature available on ecosystem services. A HeinOnline law journal library focused search identified 1903 legal articles that contained reference to ecosystem services. Focusing on a snapshot of key literature, this chapter presents an overview of those articles that contained "ecosystem services" or "ecosystem based management" just in the article's title. From this survey across the breadth of law journals, a suite of ecosystem services topics related to EBM in environmental law are identified and summarized. Overall, the goal of this chapter is to present a high-level overview and direct the reader to resources to find more in-depth legal analyses of select ecosystem services topics. Lessons Learned • EBM practitioners need to have the large suite of federal environmental laws that impact EBM as a frame of reference. • There is active legal scholar literature on the intersection between ecosystem services and environmental laws. • The majority of the active legal scholar literature is focused on the core environmental laws, however, the summary table informs the reader of the potential applications of other legal and governance frameworks to ecosystem services and EBM.

Making ecosystem services flexible: Why a whole new framework is a bad idea for practitioners

“…In the United States there are several regulatory requirements that require the evaluation of ES (see Harwell, 2020). It is important to note that not all of these regulations specifically use the term “ecosystem services,” as this terminology did not gain popularity until the early 2000s.…”