Summaries of Group Discussion-Ecosystem Services Based Approaches in Agricultural Policy Making

The research on Ecosystem Services (ES) is only recent origin and has attracted researchers in many developed and developing countries for the past two to three decades and assumes one of the important components in policy agenda.The ecosystem services assume important for those communities whose livelihood depends mainly on natural systems including agriculture.The ecosystem provides number of beneficial services to human being.These are broadly classified into four major categories viz., (i) Provisioning services, (ii) Regulatory Services, (iii) Supporting services and (iv) Socio-cultural services.Ecosystem research is facing major challenges including less understanding about different ecosystem services, their interactions, interrelationships and their true values in the light of absence of markets.In this context, the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a global initiative has been started with a focus on 'making nature's values visible'.The TEEB is aimed to mainstream the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision making at all levels (https://teebweb.org/).Realising the significance of ES in policy making, a separate theme has been planned to address the issues relating to Ecosystem Services and to derive policy options for sustainable management and conservation of ecosystems across the country.Though several researchable issues have been identified and outlined in the Conference themes announcements, very few issues such as valuation of recreational benefits from wetland ecosystems and agro-ecosystem services have been addressed by few researchers.A total of five papers have been presented during the session.Of the five papers, two papers dealt with valuation of recreational benefits of wetlands (lakes) and three papers focused on farming systems.Though there are few papers presented and discussed, the discussion has brought many key issues in ecosystem services valuation, an emerging area in agricultural policy making.The key outcomes of the discussion are presented here: MAJOR ISSUES DISCUSSED: Valuation of ecosystem services may be done extensively across types of ecosystems as it informs the true value of beneficial services to the different stakeholders including policy makers so that the sustainable management of ecosystems could be achieved  The papers presented focused on specific ecosystem services such as recreation, nitrogen fixation etc.It is suggested that in order to have a holistic value, all the services including provisioning, supporting, regulating, and socio-cultural services may be assessed.