An ecosystem service value chain for sustainable environmental management

Managing ecosystems effectively requires managing the ways in which people interact with them, as opposed to managing ecosystems in isolation. However, management decisions often rely predominantly on biophysical data, leaving socio-economic data on the periphery. The absence of centralised socio-economic data collected systematically and purposefully makes their inclusion in decision-making challenging and often impractical. Drawing on the aggregation of a variety of data from heterogeneous stakeholders, we present and test the Ecosystem Service Value Chain (ESVC), a decision-oriented data structuring framework for visualising, organising, and prioritising socio-economic data for ecosystem management decision-making. The ESVC represents the stages and processes involved in delivering ecosystem services, from ecosystems to beneficiaries (government, industries, households, and First Nations Peoples). It reframes ecosystems as traceable value flows, linking ecosystem condition to service use, realised benefits and, where possible, valuation across distinct beneficiary groups. We demonstrate that this data structuring framework enhances transparency around data quality and gaps, providing a practical pathway for prioritising socio-economic information in management.