Governing (with) ecosystem services

2016-2021 (DFG grant, project number 320283583).

'Ecosystem services' and 'ecosystem services' (ÖSL) have become key words in international, European and increasingly also German debates on nature conservation and landscape management. They are seen by some as indicators of a programmatic reorientation of biodiversity policy under economic auspices. Until now, however, little research had examined how governance in the policy field of 'nature conservation and landscape management' in Germany is changing in relation to the increased use of the word 'ecosystem services'. It was unclear, for example, whether the economization or neoliberalization of nature and landscape often described in the international arena would occur, i.e., the expansion of the application of economic, market-based principles, for example, by viewing nature conservation from a marketing perspective, or whether countervailing forces would prevail, amounting to a reinforcement of the well-rehearsed relationship between state regulation, civil society engagement, and market forces.

The aim was to examine ÖSL discourses in Germany from the perspective of governmentality research. The aim is to analyze how nature conservation and landscape management are negotiated in connection with the economically shaped ÖSL concept. The focus was on the problematizations and rationalities of governance in the policy field 'nature conservation and landscape management' produced in the corresponding discourses and counter-discourses.

A quantitative analysis of the headlines of all articles published in the two largest scientific nature conservation journals in Germany over the last 35 years revealed that supposedly economic approaches such as the ÖSL concept are used more frequently, but largely detached from other economic concepts. Instead of an economic or neoliberal one, a state-centered, scientific-bureaucratic understanding of nature conservation is still in the foreground.

An in-depth content analysis of central documents published in connection with the political initiative "Naturkapital Deutschland - TEEB DE" (Natural Capital Germany - TEEB DE) had the result that clearly neoliberal problem descriptions are provided here. However, with regard to possible goals, strategies and concepts for action, a contradictory variety of rationalities emerges. In the future, such science-policy interfaces in the field of nature conservation and landscape management should be thematically broader, separate more clearly between scientific and political statements, and deal more transparently with internal conflicts.

Against the background of the increasingly urgent socio-ecological transformation, nature conservation actors - including the civil society sector - should not use concepts such as 'ecosystem service' to reproduce utilitarian calculations of benefit and thus ultimately reaffirm the dominance of this way of thinking. Nature conservation should rather be understood as a resistant practice, which also designs emotionally attractive alternatives to the (over)use of nature and makes them tangible. With an attitude of respect for the other, it could become the driver of a transformation that fundamentally changes not only how we deal with nature, but also how we deal with each other.