Table 2.

A hypothetical comparison of implementation of the ecosystem approach and an ecosystem services approach in a case-study system, the River Dee catchment in northeast Scotland.^*

Management issue	Ecosystem services approach	Ecosystem approach
Role of different stakeholders and their different knowledges	Focus: people as users or beneficiaries of ecosystem services or as providers of ecosystem services.	Focus: stakeholders whose multiple stakes, different knowledges, and interests should ideally lead decentralized prioritization and planning for management.
	Activities: surveys with a large sample of households in the catchment to elicit their values for ecosystem services and with land-managers to elicit the opportunities and barriers for them to provide ecosystem services. Financial values may be attached to ecosystem services, and payment for ecosystem services schemes may be recommended. Economists and natural scientists lead information provision.	Activities: Separate and then joint workshops with fishers, recreationalists, household members, land managers, and regulators. These would first focus on sharing and discussing local knowledge and scientific knowledge and subsequently on identification of management priorities and planning. This is a slow and iterative process. Facilitators with experience in supporting collaboration and conflict resolution lead, and economists and natural scientists support on request.
Consideration of ecosystem function, dynamic processes, and change	Focus: identifying what ecosystem services can be provided and how. Supporting services are recognized, though with some risk of overlooking the processes and cycles underpinning these.	Focus: understanding the complex relationships that comprise socioecological systems, including relationships between people and nature. Ecological processes and limits should be appreciated by all who contribute to decision making.
	Activities: survey of stakeholder perceptions of ecosystem services followed by workshops to validate and share scientific information on ecosystem service provision. Ideally, scientists carry out primary and secondary research to understand how ecosystems and biodiversity underpin ecosystem services.	Activities: multistakeholder workshops to discuss ecosystem structure and function supported by scientists explaining existing understanding of ecosystem structure and function. Future scenarios or storylines of environmental and social change may be discussed as an aid to identifying management priorities as well as to identifying uncertainties and drivers of change.
Scale of work	Focus: not explicit.	Focus: not preset but decentralization is recommended.
	Activities: Information is probably collated at a catchment level for ease of decision making by catchment-level committee or external policy makers controlling regulation and incentive schemes.	Activities: early discussions explicitly focus on the best scale at which to work. Some decision groups form at the subcatchment level, where there is a distinct identity or sense of place.

^*For more information about this system, visit http://www.theriverdee.org.