We have recently completed one of the actions planned for the project: the report on ecosystem services.
Ecosystem Services Report: What is it and what have we done?
The concept of ecosystem services is recent and seeks to address the challenge of communicating environmental issues to the public, in particular the importance of ecosystems for our lives. Ecosystem services have therefore attributed an economic value to ecosystems. If used correctly, this tool can be suitable for communicating a topic that is still little known, such as light pollution and the value of the dark sky.
This report is the result of the work of three working groups composed of partners and associated partners on the role of the dark sky for ecosystem services, the negative impact that light pollution can have on the functioning of ecosystems, and the importance of involving stakeholders to enhance the role of the dark sky.
The working groups focused on three categories of ecosystem services (provisioning, regulating and cultural). This led to an analysis of the impact of light pollution on the ecosystem services included in the classification, providing a “repository” from which to draw inspiration for engaging stakeholders and analyzing which of them could be affected or interested.
Given that the alternation between day and night is threatened by light pollution, the lack of a sufficiently dark night can affect the functioning of an ecosystem. Among the examples of ecosystem services analyzed in the report is the fact that some plants need night-time pollinators to reproduce, but light pollution drives these pollinators away, thereby reducing pollination success and seed production. In addition, some researchers have found that artificial night lighting reduces the pollination and seed dispersal activities of fruit bats in specific ecosystems. Examples of ecosystem services also include erosion control, i.e. how artificial night lighting can interfere with plant growth by altering photoperiodic signals, weakening root development and the structural integrity of plants, which are essential for stabilizing the soil. Regarding cultural ecosystem services, it has been analyzed that excessive artificial lighting can also disrupt the quality of outdoor experiences by interfering with natural nightscapes and reducing visibility of celestial bodies, for example amateur astronomers and astrophotographers, whose activities rely heavily on a dark sky are impacted by this. In fact, in many areas, the growth of light pollution has negatively impacted stargazing tourism, which affects local economies and according to recent research more than 80% of the world’s population lives under light-polluted skies, with the Milky Way no longer visible to over one-third of humanity.
Dialogue with stakeholders was also a central part of the document’s drafting process. This made it possible to understand who the main stakeholders are, how to approach them and the importance of setting realistic targets for reducing light pollution, starting with the availability of local actors.
The report also linked this issue to concrete examples that will be pursued during the project. The analysis then focused on the pilot actions that will be carried out in five pilot demo sites, in order to link the results to the realities known to the partners and to be useful for the development of the pilot actions themselves.
The conclusion, therefore, is that the Ecosystem Services Report can be very useful in helping to understand the issue and the need for light pollution reduction, but that nothing can be done without intensive dialogue with key stakeholders and an understanding of their needs. In this sense, the involvement of local stakeholders is essential to develop good practices for more sustainable lighting and management solutions and to disseminate the ecosystem value of dark skies (environmental and economic value, e.g. astro-tourism).
For more info contact: sostenibilita@evv.it