Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human Well-Being (MESH)

Research ThemeEnhancing Sustainable Agriculture

Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being – MESH – is an ecosystem service assessment and mapping toolkit that calculates ecosystem service production functions and maps ecosystem service provision under different landscape management scenarios. The base model of MESH integrates and extends existing models of ecosystem services, such as Natural Capital Project’s InVEST and King’s College of London’s WaterWorld, to support integrative land management approaches by highlighting trade-offs associated with the provision of ecosystem services.

An extension to MESH that is under development, MESH-SDG, will generate outputs and indicators that are specific to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), based on findings from research and stakeholder consultations. MESH-SDG will provide a basis for making comparisons of progress toward multiple national SDG targets across different scenarios of ecosystem change, for example, arising from land-use planning or investment decisions.

MESH can help researchers and policy makers manage the complexity of today’s global challenges, food security, environmental sustainability, and poverty reduction. It can support policy makers to visualize the link between SDGs and the benefits that ecosystem services can contribute to human well-being, such as access to clean water, risk of malnourishment or exposure to malaria.

Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being - MESH tool demo from Bioversity International

Watch the video demonstration of MESH

Or, watch Fabrice DeClerck presenting MESH at the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation meeting in London on November 25, 2015 (presentation starts at 26:45)

Learn more and download MESH

Type:

Brief

Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being (MESH): managing landscapes to achieve Sustainable Development Goals

CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) .2015.Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being (MESH): managing landscapes to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) .2p.

Lead Partner

Bioversity International

Other Partners

MESH was developed as part of a collaboration between the Natural Capital Project, Bioversity International, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and CGIAR Research Programs on Policies, Institutions and Markets and Water, Land and Ecosystems, during a Science for Nature and People (SNAP) project, Making Ecosystems Count in the SDGs. We gratefully acknowledge participants of the SNAP project workshops in 2014 and 2015, and stakeholders of the Nile and Volta basins who participated in interviews in February 2015, who provided valuable inputs to the tool development.