INTRODUCTION TO TOPIC "TOWARDS THE LEGAL RECOGNITION AND GOVERNANCE OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES"

On behalf of the IUCN Environmental Law Centre, the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law and the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law, I would like to introduce you to the topic of this Journal "Towards the legal recognition and governance of ecosystem services." First of all, I would like to thank the Co-Chairs of the Academy´s Research Committee and the Deputy Chair of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law for this initiative and I am most happy to see that, throughout its organisation, collaboration between the three organisations has continued to grow. We organised our first joint-workshop in 2011 in Ghent, Belgium, just before the IUCN Academy´s 8th annual colloquium. The feeling that we all had as the successful event came to an end, was that this collaboration should be repeated on an annual basis. The 2011 Mpekweni Workshop revolved around legal frameworks for the recognition and governance of ecosystem services. Maintaining healthy ecosystems and the continuing provision of services such as water supply or climate regulation is key to ensuring present and future human livelihoods, the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals and for any form of poverty alleviation strategy