Ecosystem services: Implications for managing Chilika

An ecosystem services-led management of Chilika encourages a progression from a siloed approach to conservation of species and habitats to explicit consideration of benefits humans derive from these ecosystems, enabling anticipation of a wide range of consequences that may result from different management regimes, and provide tools for identifying, negotiating, avoiding, and managing potential negative tradeoffs. Wetland management would stand to benefit by explicit recognition of intrinsic, instrumental and relational values of the Ramsar Site and contributions to human well-being at multiple scales and sectors. While the investments into the restoration of Chilika has high economic efficiency, the distributional aspects of benefit sharing need to be addressed through interventions such as reducing fishing effort, increasing value realization through strategies as product differentiation, and enhancing participation of fishers in the higher segments of the value chain. The financing arrangements for wetlands management in place are not linked with the costs of ecosystem services provision, especially the maintenance of critical ecosystem processes and functions. Institutional arrangements for the management of provisioning services and select cultural services (mainly tourism) have emerged over a period of time, however, there is a relative vacuum when it comes to the management of regulating services (such as water regime moderation, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and others). Much of management effectiveness is dependent on the extent to which the institutions responsible for managing various sectoral programmes (such as climate change, rural development, water and sanitation, disaster risk reduction) take into account the multiple ecosystem services of Chilika and the implication of development programmes for sustained provision of such services. A research and monitoring framework for measuring and managing ecosystem services of Chilika needs to be based on an understanding of how the multiple services are generated by coupled social-ecological systems, their interactions and interlinkages with human well-being, and how values for ecosystem services feed into stakeholder behaviour and attitudes towards wetlands conservation and wise-use.