Manitoba EGS Policy
Ecosystem goods and services (EGS) are benefits from healthy, functioning ecosystems. Ecosystems provide food and clean water; manage disease, regulate our climate and can provide us with venues for recreation. These goods and services may be valued in markets or may be considered outside of existing markets, but their management constitutes an important investment in environmental and social sustainability for current and future generations.
Agriculture is deeply intertwined with EGS, as both a provider and a beneficiary. The viability of agriculture depends on ecosystem processes such as soil formation, climate regulation and precipitation. As a provider of EGS, agriculture provides us with commodities such as food, fibre and fuel. The challenge for agriculture and EGS is that producers benefit only from selling commodities such as food and fibre, while EGS components such as wildlife habitat regulation and purification of water and air are public benefits for which no compensation is paid. This multifunctional aspect of agriculture underlies the complexity of EGS programing and policy-making in many countries.
The research paper Ecological Goods and Services: A review of best practices in policy and programming provides a review of EGS programs and policies from across Canada and around the world, and extracts key insights for an EGS program for Manitoba. Key recommendations include the need to design an EGS program based on the multifunctional aspect of agriculture. Although multifunctionality can complicate EGS program design, implementation and monitoring, and multi-objective EGS investment decision making is not common, suggesting that the public benefit of harnessing EGS synergies (between habitat conservation and water quality, for example), trumps the administrative simplicity of single-issue programing.
IISD recommends the need to incorporate current and new programing and resources, capacity and knowledge to be effective. Also recommended is the need to link any Manitoba-based EGS program with regional and national-level environmental priorities and to incorporate the means to measure any program outcomes related to these priorities. Other recommendations include the need for geographic targeting and visualization techniques, advanced decision support mechanisms and the use of appropriate valuation tools to facilitate this process as needed.
