Scoping agriculture – wetland interactions: Towards a sustainable multiple-response strategy

Agriculture–wetland interactions (AWIs) are becoming more important as rising demand for food production exacerbates pressures on wetlands. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) identified agriculture as the major cause of wetland degradation and loss. However, while some ecosystem services, such as regulating and supporting services may be reduced, agricultural development has considerably increased the provisioning services of wetlands. More recently, the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA) concluded that the pressures on wetlands will probably increase, with the prospect of serious loss of wetlands and their ecosystem services. This is a major challenge as the regulating and supporting ecosystem services that wetlands provide are essential for the functioning of river basins, the maintaining of ecological flows, and the
sustainability of agricultural production. Hence, there is a need to explore how to improve the nature of AWIs in order to ensure an appropriate balance in ecosystem service use, i.e. a sustainable supply of all services, and not only provisioning ones