Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem governance deals with the management of not only the ecosystem, but also of related social aspects such as decision making, social interaction, and power relations. Taking a closer look at this social side of ecological issues, we learn that these issues are not straightforward or self-evident: What to take into account when describing and analyzing social-ecological systems and how to manage them in practice is open to a diversity of approaches. A common denominator and key question of these approaches seems to be how to deal with the complexity that comes with it. In this chapter we will present a diversity of approaches to ecosystem governance and draw some lessons for complexity management.