TY - JOUR

T1 - A review of studies on ecosystem services in Africa

AU - Wangai, Peter Waweru

AU - Burkhard, Benjamin

AU - Müller, Felix

N1 - Funding Information: This work is part of a PhD project funded by the Catholic Academic Exchange Service (KAAD) organization in Germany. We specially thank our colleagues in the Department of Ecosystem Management, Kiel University. We extend our gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief of this Journal and the anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments. We also sincerely thank Mr. Richard Howells from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, Edinburgh, UK for proof-reading the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2016 Copyright: Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - Assessments of ecosystem services (ES) are vital for Africa's sustainability. ES supply and demand take place in distinctive patterns in Africa due to the continent's characteristic spatial heterogeneity, rich biodiversity, demographic developments, resource endowment, resource management conflicts, and fragile political landscapes, along with current industrialization and urbanization processes. Ignorance of the dynamism of these parameters could diminish the capacity of the different ecosystem service providing units (SPU) to satisfy the demands in the ecosystem service benefiting areas (SBA) in Africa. The main aim of this review article is to assess the extent to which ES studies have been conducted and applied in Africa. This review analyzes those articles accessible online via the ISI Web of Science and open access journals. The online search yielded 52 ES-related studies, which were used for the review. Results indicate that most studies were conducted in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania, and focused on services provided by watersheds and catchment ecosystems. Crucially, most of the studies focused on more than one ES category. Provisioning ES dominated across all the ES categories. However, ES tradeoffs and synergies were barely addressed. Economic valuation of ES and ES mapping comprised more than three-quarters of all the studies, and a quarter referred to biophysical quantification or qualification of ES. There are emerging alternative, non-monetary valuation methods for ES, which could pave a new way of capturing value of non-monetized ES in Africa. Moreover, there is an urgent need to extend ES studies to the entire continent, in order to capture spatial and socio-economic uniqueness of various countries and focus more on local-scale assessments of multiple ES, as a means for addressing ES tradeoffs, synergies and SPU-SBA relations in Africa.

AB - Assessments of ecosystem services (ES) are vital for Africa's sustainability. ES supply and demand take place in distinctive patterns in Africa due to the continent's characteristic spatial heterogeneity, rich biodiversity, demographic developments, resource endowment, resource management conflicts, and fragile political landscapes, along with current industrialization and urbanization processes. Ignorance of the dynamism of these parameters could diminish the capacity of the different ecosystem service providing units (SPU) to satisfy the demands in the ecosystem service benefiting areas (SBA) in Africa. The main aim of this review article is to assess the extent to which ES studies have been conducted and applied in Africa. This review analyzes those articles accessible online via the ISI Web of Science and open access journals. The online search yielded 52 ES-related studies, which were used for the review. Results indicate that most studies were conducted in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania, and focused on services provided by watersheds and catchment ecosystems. Crucially, most of the studies focused on more than one ES category. Provisioning ES dominated across all the ES categories. However, ES tradeoffs and synergies were barely addressed. Economic valuation of ES and ES mapping comprised more than three-quarters of all the studies, and a quarter referred to biophysical quantification or qualification of ES. There are emerging alternative, non-monetary valuation methods for ES, which could pave a new way of capturing value of non-monetized ES in Africa. Moreover, there is an urgent need to extend ES studies to the entire continent, in order to capture spatial and socio-economic uniqueness of various countries and focus more on local-scale assessments of multiple ES, as a means for addressing ES tradeoffs, synergies and SPU-SBA relations in Africa.

KW - Ecosystem services

KW - Mapping

KW - Quantification

KW - Scale

KW - Valuation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84999792365&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ijsbe.2016.08.005

DO - 10.1016/j.ijsbe.2016.08.005

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:84999792365

VL - 5

SP - 225

EP - 245

JO - International Journal of Sustainable Built Environment

JF - International Journal of Sustainable Built Environment

SN - 2212-6090

IS - 2

ER -