Coordination of stakeholders' interests from an ecosystem services perspective: An approach for overall interests maximization in the Gaoligong mountain region

In the context of limited resources, coordinating the interests of all stakeholders is confronted with great challenge due to conflicting priorities and needs. Traditional coordination methods often fall short, as they struggle to comprehensively quantify and represent the diverse interests involved. Therefore, finding an effective coordinated approach to maximize overall stakeholder interest is crucial. This study focuses on the coordination of stakeholders' interests in the Gaoligong Mountain region from the perspective of ecosystem services (ESs). Food availability, soil conservation, biodiversity maintenance and tourism & recreation are selected to represent the interests of four stakeholder sectors (agricultural, disaster, forestry and tourism). Land use functions and regional characteristics were utilized to identify the region of interest (ROI) for each sector. Due to overlapping interest, where land serves as the vehicle for these interests, they are categorized into multi-sectoral coordination region (overlapping ROI) and single-sector interest maximization region (non-overlapping ROI). In the multi-sectoral coordination region, a non-dominated sorting method is applied to determine the optimal ES combination, where each ES is considered optimal. Conversely, in the single-sector interest maximization region, only the maximum ES of the single sector's ROI is deemed the optimal ES. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The ES perspective offers a more comprehensive quantification of stakeholders' interests. (2) ESs serve as a nexus between stakeholders and land. By mapping ESs to ROI, we can comprehensively coordinate multiple ESs, thereby maximizing the overall interests for all stakeholders, surpassing the simple goal of maximizing individual services for a single sector. (3) The ROI categories zoning has practical reference value and assists policymakers in making informed decisions regarding resource allocation and priority setting.