Using an Ecosystem Services perspective to assess biofuel sustainability

A special Issue has just been published by Biomass and Bioenergy (Volume 114, July 2018), edited by past and present members of OxLEL Alex Gasparatos, Carla Romeu-Dalmau and Kathy Willis, together with colleagues G.von Maltitz, F.X.Johnson, C.B.Jumbe and P.Stromberg.

The Special Issue explores how the ecosystem services perspective can provide this conceptual framework to identify and systematize biofuel trade-offs, as well as develop tools to assess them. The Special Issue highlights how the ecosystem services perspective can provide this valuable lens to study biofuel sustainability given its systems-oriented approach, ability to identify trade-offs across temporal and spatial scales, and growing acceptability among academics and stakeholders. Several important gaps are highlighted at the interface of biofuels and ecosystem services. The 14 papers included in the Special Issue employ different concepts, methods and tools from the ecosystem services literature to highlight how to apply effectively tools and concepts from the ecosystem services literature to study biofuel sustainability.

The development of the Special Issue was supported by a research grant from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Program (ESPA; NE/L001373/1). The ESPA program is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

[extracted from the Editorial for the Special Issue]