Rice ecosystem services in South-east Asia

The present special issue of Paddy and Water Environment (PAWE) focuses on Ecosystem Services in Irrigated Rice Landscapes as dealt with in the project “LEGATO—Land-use intensity and Ecological enGineering—Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems’’ (Settele et al. 2015; http://www.legato-project.net/). The project aimed at advancing long-term sustainable development of irrigated rice landscapes against risks arising from multiple aspects of global change. It encompassed 20 contract partners from six countries and two international organisations as core members as well as numerous associated partners and/or advisory board members (see addresses of authors). LEGATO was part of the framework programme ‘FONA—Research for Sustainability’ (a funding scheme of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research—BMBF) and was supported by GLUES—the scientific coordination and synthesis project (http://modul-a.nachhaltiges-landmanagement.de/en/scientific-coordination-glues/). LEGATO followed the framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) by selecting characteristic elements of three MA service strands for analyses: (a) Provisioning Services: primary production, plant diversity, crop yield; (b) Regulating and Supporting Services: biocontrol, pollination and nutrient cycling; and (c) Cultural Services: cultural diversity and aesthetics/beauty. The analysis of ecosystem services was embedded in studies of socio-cultural and economic backgrounds, local as well as regional land use intensity and biodiversity, and the potential impacts of future climate and land use change. As core output, LEGATO developed generally applicable principles of Ecological Engineering (EE), adapting, testing and implementing them under the given local socio-cultural conditions, for the stabilisation and improvement of agricultural production under future climate and land use change. EE is an emerging discipline, concerned with the design, monitoring and construction of ecosystems and aims at developing strategies to optimise the delivery of ecosystem services by enhancing natural regulation mechanisms instead of suppressing them (see also Gurr et al. 2003; Mitsch 2012; Horgan et al. 2016). Along these lines, LEGATO further aimed at generating new knowledge bases for decision making in the area of sustainable land management and livelihoods, including the support of governance and management strategies, technologies and system solutions (Truong et al. 2016).