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While a sustained flow of ecosystem services brings tangible benefits to humans, some ecosystem states and suites of services may be more desired by some people than others. Allocating or using the flow of services is loaded with asymmetries, complex power dynamics and political struggles between groups of people. We argue that the issues associated with such allocation and use questions are poorly integrated into the literatures of resilience, sustainability, and vulnerability. To illustrate this, we focus on three socially constructed factors that inhibit a fuller understanding about how to sustain the flow of ecosystem services: (1) rigidity/poverty traps; (2) power asymmetries; and (3) scientization of policy/politicization of science. These factors limit our ability to assess the sustainable flows of ecosystem services, and in particular to better understand the trade-offs and limits to aggregate human activity. We …