•Global ecosystem services value can differ by $81trillion/yr by 2050 by scenario.•Land use change and management underlays our estimates.•We provide global assessments and details for every ...country.•Countries with deserts see the greatest effects.•The Great Transition scenario can allow a sustainable and desirable future.
We estimated the future value of ecosystem services in monetary units for 4 alternative global land use and management scenarios based on the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) scenarios to the year 2050. We used previous estimates of the per biome values of ecosystem services in 2011 as the basis for comparison. We mapped projected land-use for 16biomes at 1km2 resolution globally for each scenario. This, combined with differences in land management for each scenario, created estimates of global ecosystem services values that also allowed for examinations of individual countries. Results show that under different scenarios the global value of ecosystem services can decline by $51trillion/yr or increase by USD $30trillion/yr. In addition to the global values, we report totals for all countries and maps for a few example countries. Results show that adopting a set of policies similar to those required to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, would greatly enhance ecosystem services, human wellbeing and sustainability.
•Global loss of ecosystem services due to land use change is $US 4.3–20.2trillion/yr.•Ecoservices contribute more than twice as much to human well-being as global GDP.•Estimates in monetary units are ...useful to show the relative magnitude of ecoservices.•Valuation of ecosystem services is not the same as commodification or privatization.•Ecosystem services are best considered public goods requiring new institutions.
In 1997, the global value of ecosystem services was estimated to average $33trillion/yr in 1995 $US ($46trillion/yr in 2007 $US). In this paper, we provide an updated estimate based on updated unit ecosystem service values and land use change estimates between 1997 and 2011. We also address some of the critiques of the 1997 paper. Using the same methods as in the 1997 paper but with updated data, the estimate for the total global ecosystem services in 2011 is $125trillion/yr (assuming updated unit values and changes to biome areas) and $145trillion/yr (assuming only unit values changed), both in 2007 $US. From this we estimated the loss of eco-services from 1997 to 2011 due to land use change at $4.3–20.2trillion/yr, depending on which unit values are used. Global estimates expressed in monetary accounting units, such as this, are useful to highlight the magnitude of eco-services, but have no specific decision-making context. However, the underlying data and models can be applied at multiple scales to assess changes resulting from various scenarios and policies. We emphasize that valuation of eco-services (in whatever units) is not the same as commodification or privatization. Many eco-services are best considered public goods or common pool resources, so conventional markets are often not the best institutional frameworks to manage them. However, these services must be (and are being) valued, and we need new, common asset institutions to better take these values into account.
•We review the history leading up to two 1997 publications on ecosystem services.•We review the subsequent debates, research, and institutions they triggered.•We summarize lessons learned during the ...20years since 1997.•We provide recommendations for the future of research and practice.•Ecosystem services are at the core of the fundamental changes needed in economics.
It has been 20years since two seminal publications about ecosystem services came out: an edited book by Gretchen Daily and an article in Nature by a group of ecologists and economists on the value of the world’s ecosystem services. Both of these have been very highly cited and kicked off an explosion of research, policy, and applications of the idea, including the establishment of this journal. This article traces the history leading up to these publications and the subsequent debates, research, institutions, policies, on-the-ground actions, and controversies they triggered. It also explores what we have learned during this period about the key issues: from definitions to classification to valuation, from integrated modelling to public participation and communication, and the evolution of institutions and governance innovation. Finally, it provides recommendations for the future. In particular, it points to the weakness of the mainstream economic approaches to valuation, growth, and development. It concludes that the substantial contributions of ecosystem services to the sustainable wellbeing of humans and the rest of nature should be at the core of the fundamental change needed in economic theory and practice if we are to achieve a societal transformation to a sustainable and desirable future.
We use two datasets to characterize impacts on ecosystem services. The first is a spatially explicit measure of the impact of human consumption or ‘demand’ on ecosystem services as measured by the ...human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP) derived from population distributions and aggregate national statistics. The second is an actual measure of loss of productivity or a proxy measure of ‘supply’ of ecosystem services derived from biophysical models, agricultural census data, and other empirical measures. This proxy measure of land degradation is the ratio of actual NPP to potential NPP. The HANPP dataset suggests that current ‘demand’ for NPP exceeds ‘supply’ at a corresponding ecosystem service value of $10.5 trillion per year. The land degradation measure suggests that we have lost $6.3 trillion per year of ecosystem service value to impaired ecosystem function. Agriculture amounts to 2.8% of global GDP. With global GDP standing at $63 trillion in 2010, all of agriculture represents $1.7 Trillion of the world's GDP. Our estimate of lost ecosystem services represent a significantly larger fraction (~10%) of global GDP. This is one reason the economics of land degradation is about a lot more than the market value of agricultural products alone.
•Valuation is about assessing trade-offs toward a goal.•There are 3 goals for ES valuation: efficiency (E-value), fairness (F-value) and sustainability (S-value).•An integrated approach to valuation ...is needed toward these 3 goals.•A whole systems view of humans and the rest of nature is needed.
Ecosystem services (ES) are the ecological characteristics, functions, or processes that directly or indirectly contribute to sustainable human wellbeing. The ecosystems that provide the services are ‘natural capital’ (NC) using the general definition of capital as a stock that yields a flow of services over time. But these concepts must be embedded in a whole systems view of the interdependencies between humans and the rest of nature, as espoused by ecological economics from its inception. Valuing NC and ES is therefore about assessing their contributions (in complex interaction with built, human, and social capital) toward the goal of sustainable wellbeing of the whole system of humans and the rest of nature. This recognizes that sustainable human wellbeing cannot be achieved without the wellbeing of the rest of nature. To achieve this, an integrated approach to valuation toward the three sub-goals of efficient allocation (E-value), fair distribution (F-value) and sustainable scale (S-value) is necessary. This article reviews these ideas, and discusses an agenda to improve understanding and valuation of NC and ES toward the goals of efficiency, fairness, and sustainability in a dynamic, whole systems context.
The argument that human society can decouple economic growth-defined as growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-from growth in environmental impacts is appealing. If such decoupling is possible, it ...means that GDP growth is a sustainable societal goal. Here we show that the decoupling concept can be interpreted using an easily understood model of economic growth and environmental impact. The simple model is compared to historical data and modelled projections to demonstrate that growth in GDP ultimately cannot be decoupled from growth in material and energy use. It is therefore misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible. We also note that GDP is increasingly seen as a poor proxy for societal wellbeing. GDP growth is therefore a questionable societal goal. Society can sustainably improve wellbeing, including the wellbeing of its natural assets, but only by discarding GDP growth as the goal in favor of more comprehensive measures of societal wellbeing.
Practical problem-solving in complex societies requires the integration of three elements: (1) active and ongoing envisioning of both how the world works and how we would like the world to be, (2) ...systematic analysis appropriate to and consistent with the vision and (3) implementation appropriate to the vision. Scientists generally focus on the second step, but integrating all three is essential for both good science and effective, democratic decision-making. Subjective values enter the vision of broad social goals and the pre-analytic vision that necessarily precedes any form of scientific analysis. Because of this need for vision, completely objective scientific analysis is impossible. To better support democratic decision-making, scholars of all varieties need to acknowledge the need to engage more directly in all three elements of the process while sharing their knowledge of how the world works and bringing their understanding of uncertainty more effectively to the table. This more integrated role of the scholars can help overcome the currently widespread denial of critical knowledge about how the world works, especially about climate, wellbeing, and evolution, and support better, more democratic decision-making about how we would like the world to be and how to get there.
Ecological economics (EE) was originally envisioned as a transdiscipline with the following core characteristics and goals: (1) a focus on the primary goal of sustainable wellbeing of both humans and ...the rest of nature; (2) three broad sub-goals of sustainable scale, fair distribution, and efficient allocation. (3) intelligent pluralism and integration across disciplines, rather than territorial disciplinary differentiation; (4) concern with the functioning of the interdependent system of humans embedded in the rest of nature from an evolutionary, whole systems perspective; (5) an emphasis on the development of valuation techniques that build on a broad understanding of the interaction of built, human, social and natural capital to produce sustainable wellbeing. These characteristics and goals make ecological economics applicable to some of the major problems facing humanity today, and especially to the problem of improving humanity’s wellbeing and assuring its survival within the biosphere. Going forward EE must move further beyond the argument culture to finally become the meta-paradigm that it was originally envisioned to be. It can use its tools and vision to enable society to overcome its addiction to the current unsustainable growth paradigm and make the transition to the world we all want.
“Ecosystem Services” is now a well-defined and active enough field of scholarship to warrant its own academic journal (this paper is published in the inaugural issue). In this paper we describe the ...authorship structure of this rapidly emerging transdisciplinary field, which has so far generated over 2400 papers (as of January 2011) listed in ISI Web of Science journals, written by over 2000 authors since the 1990s. We describe the number of publications, the number and interconnection of co-authors, clusters of co-authors, and other variables for the top 172 authors who have authored or co-authored more than 5 papers each. These 172 authors together have written over half the total papers. This allows a coherent picture of current participants in the field and their collaborative interconnections. These methods can be applied to any topic area and represent one way to better understand and support emerging scholarship that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries.
► Ecosystem services is a rapidly emerging field of transdisciplinary scholarship. ► We describe the co-authorship structure of the field for the top 172 authors. ► Clusters of co-authorship reveal aspects of the social capital in the field. ► Ecosystem services is highly productive compared to other fields.
Ecosystem health is a desired endpoint of environmental management and should be a primary design goal for ecological engineering. This paper describes ecosystem health as a comprehensive, ...multiscale, measure of system vigor, organization and resilience. Ecosystem health is thus closely linked to the idea of sustainability, which implies the ability of the system to maintain its structure (organization) and function (vigor) over time in the face of external stress (resilience). To be truly successful, ecological engineering should pursue the broader goal of designing healthy ecosystems, which may be novel assemblages of species that perform desired functions and produce a range of valuable ecosystem services. In this way ecological engineering can achieve its goals, embedded in its definition as the “design of sustainable ecosystems that integrate human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both.” It allows the benefits of ecological engineering practices ‘to both humans and the rest of nature’ to be assessed in an integrated and consistent way that will allow us to build a sustainable and desirable future.
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