The governance potential of ecosystem services research in Belgium Authors: Keune H.* 123 , Jacobs S.* 3 , Bauler T. 4 , Casaer J. 2 , Cerulus T. 5 , Denayer B. 6 , Dendoncker N. 7 , Deneef H. 8 , Liekens I. 9 , Peeters A. 10 , Scheppers T. 2 , Simoens I. 2 , Staes J. 3 , Turkelboom F. 2 , Van der Biest K. 3 . 1 Belgian Biodiversity Platform; 2 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO); 3 University of Antwerp; 4 Université libre de Bruxelles; 5 Flemish Government, Environment, Nature and Energy Department; 6 Agency for Nature and Forest (ANB); 7 Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix (FUNDP); 8 Flemish Land Organisation (VLM); 9 Flemish Institute of Technological Research (VITO); 10 Research centre for a Sustainable Rural Development and Ecosystem Management (RHEA); * Corresponding authors: hans.keune@inbo.be & sander.jacobs@ua.ac.be Abstract Over the past years the concept of ecosystem services is finding its way in international ecosystem research. This is also the case for Belgium: a growing community of researchers and practitioners is engaging with the concept and collaboration is increasing, both within science and between science and policy. Eight examples of ecosystem related research are presented. What is the governance potential of this growing body of ecosystem services research in Belgium? We conclude that most of these projects have the ambition to be governance relevant and try to incorporate such ambition within the their projects. Still, if we look at governance characteristics, we have to conclude that the focus within most projects still is mainly on science and only to a lesser extent to governance practice. This does not mean that the concept of ecosystem services is not relevant for ecosystem governance. But to really live up to this potential, still quite some challenges have to be fulfilled. Introduction In this paper we will introduce the concept of ecosystem services and how it is finding its way in Belgium research. We will specifically focus on the governance potential of the concept. The main question we try to answer is: what is the governance potential of ecosystem services research in Belgium? We will do this by introducing several main ecosystem services related research projects and try to characterize them in terms of governance aspects. 1 We will briefly introduce the roots of the ecosystem services concept and its relation to sustainability. 2 We introduce general governance issues. 3 We introduce the Belgian ecosystem services community. 4 We present eight Belgian ecosystem services research projects of members of this community. 5 We try to characterize based on these governance descriptors. After that we will draw some conclusions. 1 Ecosystem services and sustainability Throughout history, references to our dependence and influence on natural resources abide (Daily et al 2007). The current ideas on ecosystem services probably arose when Marsh (1864) pointed out the finiteness of soil fertility in the Mediterranean area (Marsh 1864). It took over 80 years before these ideas resurfaced in the work of Osborn (1948), Vogt (1948), and Leopold (1949) who