Spatial disconnections between locations where ecosystem services are produced and where they are used are common. To date most ecosystem service assessments have relied on static indicators of provision and often do not incorporate relations with the corresponding beneficiaries or benefiting areas. Most studies implicitly assume spatial and temporal connections between ecosystem service provision and beneficiaries, while the actual connections, i.e., ecosystem service flows, are poorly understood. In this paper, we present a generic framework to analyze the spatial connections between the ecosystem service provisioning and benefiting areas. We introduce an indicator that shows the proportion of benefiting areas supported by spatial ecosystem service flows from provisioning areas. We illustrate the application of the framework and indicator by using global maps of provisioning and benefitting areas for pollination services. We also illustrate our framework and indicator using water provision and climate regulation services, as they portray important differences in spatiotemporal scale and process of service flow. We also describe the possible application of the framework for other services and other scales of assessment. We highlight how, depending on the ecosystem service being studied, the spatial service flows between provisioning and benefiting areas can limit service delivery, thereby reducing the local value of ecosystem service supply

A central question in international climate policy making is how to distribute the burdens of keeping global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. In particular, there are four distributional issues: how to allocate the total amount of greenhouse gases that can still be emitted, who should bear the costs of mitigation, who should bear the costs of adaptation to unavoidable climate change, and who should bear the costs of residual climate damage. Regarding these distributional issues the academic literature offers a plethora of fairness principles, such as ‘polluter pays’, ‘beneficiary pays’, ‘equal per capita rights’, ‘grandfathering’, ‘ability to pay’, ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘cost effectiveness’. Remarkably, there is a theoretical gap between these principles and the central theories of distributive justice in moral and political philosophy. As a consequence, it is unclear how these principles are related, whether they can be combined or are mutually exclusive, and what the fundamental underlying values are. This paper aims to elucidate that debate. Understanding the different underlying values may facilitate bridge-building and movement in negotiation positions.

Today, the United States is as dependent on fossil fuels for its patterns of consumption and production as its South was on slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. That US congressmen tend to rationalise fossil fuel use despite climate risks to future generations just as Southern congressmen rationalised slavery despite ideals of equality is perhaps unsurprising, then. This article explores similarities between the rationalisation of slavery in the abolition debates and the rationalisation of ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases in the US congressional debates on the Kyoto Protocol.

This article provides a first rough sketch of how to conceptualize countries’ present and historical contributions to the loss of global ecosystem services, i.e., ecosystem services of which the delivery is global and omnidirectional, and discusses the implications of questions concerning the international distribution of responsibilities. On the basis of limited empirical data about past and present land conversion, some first calculations suggest that keeping converted land in a converted state, thus preventing ecosystems recovery, may contribute more to current loss of global ecosystem services than new conversion of ecosystems. Moreover, many developing countries in the tropics may contribute more to the loss of global ecosystem services, in both absolute terms and per capita, than many developed countries in temperate zones. This would make finding an equitable arrangement for international allocation of responsibilities for biological conservation far more complex than for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, raising new and challenging questions for normative theorists.