On the use of multicriteria decision analysis to formally integrate community values into ecosystem-based freshwater management

Freshwater ecosystems are essential to peoples' economic, cultural, and social well-being, yet are still among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. Consequently, a plethora of recent regulations and policies seek to halt the loss of restore or safeguard freshwaters, their biodiversity, and the ecosystem services they provide. Ecosystem-based management (EBM), an approach that considers human society as an integral part of ecosystems, is increasingly being promoted to help meet this challenge. EBM involves an overarching regulatory framework and local solutions with trade-offs and compromises—factors that not only make decision processes complex but also provide the means for combining top-down regulation with bottom-up priorities into collaborative management strategies.