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Welcome to the VOTES project
Welcome to the VOTES project website, a Valuation Of Terrestrial Ecosystem Services in a multifunctional peri-urban space
The VOTES project is a 2 years research contract aiming at quantifying the importance of key ecosystem services for a case study in central Belgium.
The objective is to perform an integrated assessment of ecosystem services that would be the first example for Europe.
Among the components of global change, land use change has been identified as one of the main pressures on ecosystem services and biodiversity. Therefore, the VOTES project is taking into account the three pillars of sustainable development: economy, society, and environment.
The project is a partnership of four expert research groups from the Flemish and French communities of Belgium. They constitutes the multi-disciplinary team providing complementary expertise in the fields of natural and human sciences.
In this project, we are going to investigate how the values of ecosystem services are likely to change under the different scenarios. The issues of trade-offs, transfer, communication and distribution of ecosystem services will be examined under economic, social and environmental perspectives with the local community and stakeholders. Development of new and/or adaptations to existing policy instruments will be suggested, which implement the developed methodology into decision-making processes.
