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We share many of the views of de Groot et al. on the relevance of ecosystem services (ES) and the constructive role they have played in highlighting the importance of nature to people. Here we aim to further clarify how the concept of Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) contributes to science and policy.It was not the aim of our article to review the literature on ecosystem services (ES). The point of our article was to explain the concept of NCP not to review the extensive ES literature. We are in full agreement that the influence of ES has been long and rich, from its first mention in the peer-reviewed literature (1) to the present. As explicitly stated in our articles (2, 3) and further clarified in our figure S1, the IPBES approach owes much to the influence of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) (4). The NCP framing has a number of elements that were present in the MA, as well as new elements.Ecosystem services are a subset of NCP, but there is more to NCP than ES. Beyond apparent similarities in definitions (e.g. services = contributions in some cases), the ES and NCP framings are different, with NCP being epistemologically, ontologically and methodologically more pluralistic. ES are part of NCP, that is, the ES approach represents an important subset of ways to understand nature’s diverse contributions to people.

Daniel Faith makes several very good points. We deal with only one of them in this short response, the role of biodiversity as a source of options for people now and in the future. We agree with Faith that biodiversity at all scales, from local to global, is critically important for humans in the face of the unknown, and for the future production of nature’s contributions to people (NCP). We also agree that NCP in the face of the unknown should include both those associated with particular components of biodiversity, and those related to the continued existence of the variety of life. One of our categories of NCP indeed addresses these two aspects. “Maintenance of options” (NCP 18 within the generalizing perspective, Table S1) refers to the capacity of ecosystems, habitats, species or genotypes to keep options open in order to support a good quality of life. This includes the future benefits or threats derived from particular genes, organisms, groups of organisms or ecosystems, be they still unknown or already known but their future uses as yet undiscovered. NCP 18 also includes the contributions of all species, populations and genotypes to processes for coping with environmental uncertainty, such as the resilience and resistance of ecosystems in the face of environmental change and variability. Finally, it recognises future benefits or threats that may be anticipated from ongoing biological evolution, including rapid contemporary evolution. Using the eloquent metaphor of Faith et al., the existing global variety of life is a “storehouse”, and the on-going evolutionary process is a “factory” of new benefits and threats; both are included in the NCP framework. The NCP approach also seeks to integrate the various ways in which nature keeps our options open through the lens of other knowledge systems (context-specific perspective), from contributing to food autonomy at the household and local levels, to mutual enhancement of regional crop diversity and social networks, to the deliberate dispersal along “song-lines” of nutritious non-cultivated species enhancing the liveability of forests for future generations.

[No abstract available]

Nature and its benefits to people for a good quality of life is perceived and valued in starkly different and often conflicting ways, mainly due to different worldviews about the relationships between society and nature. This paper presents the rationale for an inclusive incorporation of this diversity of values in decision making, as well as approaches for doing so, as they co-exist and often compete in society. While developed within the context of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable to initiatives at the knowledge-policy interface, which inherently require a pluralistic approach to the multiple values of the natural world and its contribution to human societies. We argue that transformative practices aiming at sustainable futures would benefit from the recognition and orchestration of these multiple values in a wide range of policy and decision-making processes.

International audience; Recreation is frequently an essential issue in many beach management plans. To that end, classifications of beaches could be used in order to define development priorities and management practices. Thus, the selection of appropriate indicators is an ongoing debate as well as the necessity to combine environmental and socio-economic variables. In this paper, we compare three typologies that have been used in the recent formulation of a beach planning program in the South West of France (“Schéma Plans Plages” or “Beach Plan Scheme”). The first classification was engineering-driven and based on environmental and management information. It describes actual management practices and environmental resources. A multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis had lead to identify four types of beaches. The second one was an economics-driven approach designed to evaluate the management costs of recreation. It was based on a microeconomic framework and implemented statistical and econometric methods. Several types of costs values and costs functions were provided. Both of these approaches were developed by the authors with original data. The third classification was proposed by a group of experts coming from the administration (local communities, public agencies) aimed at defining regional development strategies. Compared to the previous ones, such a classification mainly reflects the preferences of local politics. Many official documents refer to this classification and new recreational projects must now be defined accordingly. In this last case, four other classes have been proposed. We compare these three approaches and study the possible combinations between them. Following this, we discuss the cost efficiency of different management strategies (including the schemes defined by the local authorities). We finally point out the challenges raised by such a multidisciplinary work and the need for a better integration between science and policy.