Stakeholder priorities dominate the evaluation of climate change impacts on ecosystem-service multifunctionality

Rapid climate change poses risks to vital ecosystem services, thereby threatening human societies that depend on these services. But how are ecosystem services prioritized by various stakeholders, and how might these differential priorities affect the evaluation of climate change impacts on ecosystem-service multifunctionality (ESMF)? To address these questions, we defined ESMF as the joint supply of multiple services relative to stakeholder demand, and conducted a social survey to obtain quantitative measures of ecosystem service prioritization from diverse stakeholders, such as pastoralists and biodiversity conservation agencies. Integrating these stakeholder-specific weightings with biophysical data from a decade-long climate change experiment, we found that stakeholders differed in their priorities, leading to differences in their evaluation of ESMF responses to climate change. Specifically, while warming and altered precipitation led to a decline in ESMF for groups prioritizing biodiversity conservation, multifunctionality was maintained or even increased for pastoralists, whose priorities focused almost entirely on forage provision. Similarly, warming was predicted to negatively impact the ESMF prioritized by environmental protection and biodiversity conservation agencies. These negative impacts were consistently stronger under dry climate conditions than under wet conditions. This work deepens our understanding of how stakeholder priorities shape the evaluation of climate change impacts on ESMF. This knowledge is essential for encouraging the development of appropriate and sustainable management strategies for local ecosystem services under climate change.