Multi-criteria Decision Analysis on Peatland Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Given the limitations of monetary valuation of ecosystem services, there is a growing interest in mixed or multiple criteria assessment methods such as participatory Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), which has variably be seen as an alternative or complementary approach to monetary valuation of ecosystem services (Kenter et al. 2015). According to Vatn (2009), MCDA is particularly suited for integrated valuation of ecosystem services because it can combine information about the performance of the alternatives with respect to evaluation criteria with subjective judgments about the relative importance of the criteria in a particular decision-making context.

In this paper we look at the potential of MCDA to capture multiple dimensions of value provided by peatland ecosystems in Finland. Peatlands offer various, and mutually exclusive, ecosystem services: Peat is a domestic source of energy but its extraction destroys peatland ecosystems and their capacity to provide services such as water purification and carbon sequestration. A participatory MCDA process using interactive decision analysis interviews (Marttunen and Hämäläinen 2008) was organised with ten key stakeholder representatives in 2016-17 to evaluate the capacity of alternative peatland scenarios to produce ecosystem services, and to determine the relative importance of the services in this context.

The results were presented in a disaggregating fashion, illustrating the different perspectives to the debate. Important part of the analysis was also reporting the arguments and value statements behind the criteria weights. Somewhat surprisingly, all stakeholders gave relatively little value to cultural ecosystem services. The most important conflicts were between provisioning services (peat) and regulating services (carbon sequestration and biodiversity). It also turned out that the ecosystem services framework did not capture all aspects of the debate, including employment and land ownership rights. To conclude, the MCDA process was well-suited for a joint problem structuring and fact finding with the key stakeholders but unlike a parallel citizens' jory process, it did not facilitate learning and reflection among the stakeholder representatives. The most important output of the process was that it required the participants to make explicit value judgments and hence facilitated transparent policy dialogue on the future of peat extraction in Finland.

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