Ecosystem Services: Definitions, concepts and applications

Question 1

Definition of ecosystem services: 1

Answer 1

The conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain, and fulfill human life (Daily 1997)

Question 2

Definition of ecosystem services: 2

Answer 2

The benefits people obtain from ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2006)

Question 3

Definition of ecosystem services: 3

Answer 3

Ecosystem services are the aspects of ecosystems that actively or passively, produce human welling-being (Fisher et al. 2009)

Question 4

Definition of ecosystem services: 4

Answer 4

The benefits provided by ecosystems that contribute to making human life both possible and worth living (UK National Ecosystem Assessment, 2011)

Question 5

Definition of ecosystem services: 5

Answer 5

The benefits obtain from ecosystems for human well-being (TESSA, 2011)

Question 6

Definition of ecosystem services: 6

Answer 6

The benefits that people derive from nature (Nature Conservancy, 2015)

Question 7

What is an ecosystem?

Answer 7

An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plants, animals, and microorganism communities and the non-living environment, including humans, interacting as a functional unit

Question 8

What are properties of ecosystems?

Answer 8

1. Vary in size;
2. Share the basic structural units;
3. Boundary should be clear where a number of discontinuities coincide e.g. in the distribution of organisms, soil types, etc.

Question 9

What is the ecosystem approach?

Answer 9

Provides a valuable framework for analysing and acting on the linkages between people and their environment.

Question 10

How does the Convention of Biological Diversity (2000) define ecosystem approach?

Answer 10

“The Ecosystem Approach is a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way. Thus, the application of the ecosystem approach will help to reach a balance of the three objectives of the Convention: conservation; sustainable use; and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. An ecosystem approach is based on the application of appropriate scientific methodologies focused on levels of biological organization, which encompass the essential structure, processes, functions and interactions among organisms and their environment. It recognizes that humans, with their cultural diversity, are an integral component of many ecosystems.”

Question 11

What are the key principles of the ecosystem approach to achieve the sustainable use of ecosystem services?

Answer 11

1. Management within natural limits
2. Management for the long term
3. Management at the macro and micro scales
4. Account for true value
5. Make trade-offs clear
6. Involve stakeholders in decisions

Question 12

What is Key Concept 1 of ecosystem services?

Answer 12

1. If nobody benefits, there’s no ecosystem services

Question 13

Describe Key Concept 1 and the beneficiaries.

Answer 13

• Box 1: Both benefits and provisions occur at the same location E.g. soil formation
• Box 2: benefits in all directions equally e.g. pollinations
• Box 3 & 4 benefits of ES in particular direction
• Box 3 – downstream from services
• Box 4 – ES only flows in one direction e.g. mangrove services

Question 14

What is Key Concept 2 of ecosystem services?

Answer 14

2. Ecosystem services are not the ecosystem that provided them. They are what the ecosystem does

Question 15

Describe Key Concept 2.

Answer 15

• Wetland not the service – clean water purification is – clean water is the benefit
• Bees are not the service – pollination is

Question 16

What is Key Concept 3 of ecosystem services?

Answer 16

3. Ecosystem services can be one of these economic goods: private good; common-pool resource; toll or club good; and public good

Question 17

Key Concept 3: What is a private good?

Answer 17

Both:
- Excludable = “I can prevent you from accessing it”
and
- Rival = “If I use it, there is less for you”

Question 18

Key Concept 3: What are examples of a private good?

Answer 18

Fish & timber

Question 19

Key Concept 3: What is a Toll or club good?

Answer 19

Both:
- Excludable = “I can prevent you from accessing it”
and
- Non-rival

Question 20

Key Concept 3: What are examples of a toll or club good?

Answer 20

Copyrighted information

Question 21

Key Concept 3: What is a Common-pool resource?

Answer 21

Both:
- Non-excludable
and
- Rival = “If I use it, there is less for you”

Question 22

Key Concept 3: What are examples of a common-pool resource?

Answer 22

Public grazing land

Question 23

Key Concept 3: What is a Public good?

Answer 23

Both:
- Non-excludable
and
- Non-rival

Question 24

Key Concept 3: What are examples of a public good?

Answer 24

Stable climate

Question 25

Describe Plato (c. BC 400)?

Answer 25

• Simple notion of human dependence on Earth’s ecosystems

- Understood that forest could prevent soil erosion and maintain the underground water

Question 26

Describe Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh (1864)?

Answer 26

• A culmination of a lifetime of his observations of the natural world
• When humans exploit natural resources without regard to management and replenishment, the land is ultimately destroyed

Question 27

What happened in the late 1940s?

Answer 27

The idea of ‘natural capital’ arose

Question 28

What did the Countryside survey measure?

Answer 28

Change in the UK’s countryside, 1978 – 2007

Question 29

What are the properties of the Countryside survey?

Answer 29

• ‘Audit’ of the natural resources
• Regular intervals since 1978
• Rigorous scientific methods

Question 30

Describe Nature’s Services by Gretchen Daily (ed.), 1997?

Answer 30

“Represents one of the first efforts by scientists to provide an overview of the many benefits and services that nature offers to people and the extent to which we are all vitally dependent on those services.”

Question 31

Describe The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital by Costanza et al. in Nature, 1997?

Answer 31

• A first attempt to measure the economic value of ecosystem services at a global level
• Total value was between 18-54 trillion dollars per year
• Controversial!

Question 32

What happened in the same year as The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital by Costanza et al. in Nature, 1997?

Answer 32

A team led byRobert Costanzaattempted to put monetary value on 17 different ecosystem services and concluded that the total value was between 18-54 trillion dollars per year, as compared to total global GNP.

Question 33

Describe Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), 2005?

Answer 33

• First global study on the state of the natural environment
• Established in 2001
• MA’s definition of ESs:
  benefits people obtain from ecosystems
• Established links between Ecosystem Services & Human Wellbeing

Question 34

What are some other Ecosystem Services frameworks?

Answer 34

• A revised framework by Roy Haines-Young and Marion Potschin (2010)
• The links between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being In: Raffaelli, D. and Frid, C.(eds.) Ecosystem Ecology: a new synthesis.

Question 35

How are ES produced?

Answer 35

As a result of ecosystem functions and processes which in turn provide goods and other benefits for human well-being

Question 36

What do ES represent?

Answer 36

Non-use and non-material outputs from ecosystems and goods represent use and material outputs that have value for people

Question 37

Describe Bringing ecosystem services into the real world: an operational framework for assessing the economic consequences of losing wild nature in Environmental and Resource Economics by Balmford et al., 2011

Answer 37

• Previous studies on the valuation of services have problems of double-counting in combining values across components
• Avoiding ‘double-counting’