Unravelling the interrelationships between ecosystem services and human wellbeing in the Bangladesh delta

ABSTRACT

Coupled social and ecological systems need to be understood from a dynamic perspective in order to operationalise complexity concepts, such as tipping points, for sustainable ecosystem management. In this study, we strive to achieve this type of conceptual understanding through the analysis of the relationships (e.g. strength, nonlinearity) between the trends of ecosystem services (ES) and human wellbeing (HWB) between 1960 and 2010 in the south-west Bangladesh delta using generalized additive and logistic regression models. We use sequential principal components analysis to investigate the connectedness within the social–ecological system as a measure of resilience. We also use published literature to help develop a system dynamic framework in order to investigate how ES and HWB are interlinked. Overall, our results support previous work, which depicts that material wellbeing (basic materials for a good life) having a strong relationship with provisioning services, which in turn, show a weak relationship with the quality of life (security and health). Moreover, our analysis confirms the ‘Environmentalist’s Paradox’ that HWB has increased despite the deterioration in ES. However, our results suggest that provisioning services are not the only important reason for the increases in observed HWB, as these have also been substantially influenced by technology and capital investment (aid and subsidy). In addition, worsening trends in regulation services and in ‘slow’ variables such as climate suggest that the resilience of the overall social-ecological system is decreasing. Such changes may have severe consequences if they continue, for example, if temperatures exceed the upper physiological limits of key provisioning services (e.g. rice, fish) in the Bangladesh delta. These indicators all suggest that although in terms of HWB the deltaic social–ecological system may be successfully adapting to environmental change, it may also be close to transgressing critical ecological boundaries in the near future.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamic framework
• ecosystem services
• human wellbeing
• nonlinear
• threshold
• social–ecological system

Acknowledgements

Md. Sarwar Hossain acknowledges financial support provided by a joint NERC/ESRC interdisciplinary PhD studentship award (1223260) and the University of Southampton. John Dearing acknowledges financial support from the project ESPA-DELTAS ‘Assessing health, livelihoods, ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in populous deltas’ (NE/J002755/1) funded by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA), and the project BF-DELTAS ‘Catalyzing action towards sustainability of deltaic systems with an integrated modelling framework for risk assessment’ funded by the Belmont Forum (award no. 1342944). The UK ESPA programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). This is a Sustainability Science at Southampton publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by a joint NERC/ESRC interdisciplinary PhD studentship award [1223260] and the University of Southampton. The financial support from the project ESPA-DELTAS ‘Assessing health, livelihoods, ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in populous deltas’ [NE/J002755/1] funded by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA), and the project BF-DELTAS ‘Catalyzing action towards sustainability of deltaic systems with an integrated modelling framework for risk assessment’ funded by the Belmont Forum [award no. 1342944]. The UK ESPA programme is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).