Pairing the concepts of ecosystem services and resilience to navigate in the current crises toward sustainability

In the last decades, humanity has considerably altered the functioning of Earth, resulting in global and inter-related social, economic, and environmental crises. To address these crises, the concepts of ecosystem services (ES) and resilience look promising to understand the complexity of the social-ecological system (SES) and its dynamics. However, operational frameworks that bring together these two concepts are still lacking. We therefore propose the Navigate framework to guide the researchers and the managers in finding sustainable solutions, in other words safe and just strategies.
This framework was built from a literature review, interviews with leading experts, and feedback from its implementation in a case study.
The conceptual part of the Navigate framework illustrates the multiple interactions between nature and society, depicted by the ES, occurring at various scales. Following disturbances, the SES responds by either persisting, adapting or even transforming (i.e. three forms of resilience). The operational part of Navigate suggests six steps to follow in an iterative process: (1) define the system, (2) define the problem, the stakes and goals, (3) define the pathways, (4) assess the ES, (5) assess resilience, and (6) design the action plan.
The implementation of this framework to a case study demonstrated that together ES and resilience with a participatory process gave a comprehensive picture of the SES, essential to making sound sustainable decisions. Indeed, the integrated assessment of ES combining various complementary methods highlights the stakeholders’ needs and perspectives, the various forms of knowledge, the scales, and the interactions. Resilience broadened the analysis by understanding how the important drivers impacted the SES and its ES.
In conclusion, the Navigate framework shows the way (i.e. which ES the stakeholders have requested) while considering the dynamic properties of the SES, amidst increasing social and ecological uncertainties, to navigate together toward sustainability. We recommend applying this framework for research or projects that have a strong focus on the social aspects with enough resources, notably a transdisciplinary team that will be able to implement the different and complementary methods needed to assess the different values of ES and resilience.