ABSTRACT

Ecosystem services are processes by which the environment produces resources that are useful for humans. These services are extensive and diverse and determine the quality of our land, water, food, and health in general. There are a wide range of benefits obtained from the environment (CIFOR 2009; Haines-Young and Potschin 2013). In the “ecosystem services cascade” (Figure  7.1), services can have social as well as economic values. Most ecosystems, whether they are artificial, seminatural, or wholly natural, are multifunctional and capable of delivering market and nonmarket benefits. Figure 7.1 depicts a reasonable perspective where the ecosystem services are interrelated with the things that people directly use and value. These services can represent inputs to the economy (provisioning services, such as timber) or services to the economy such as the assimilation and processing of waste (regulating services). Social values can include cultural significance as well as moral and aesthetic worth for people. For instance, the carbon sequestration and water regulating services of plantation woodlands would not seem to be regarded as flows from the environment in the System of Economic and Environmental Accounts (SEEA 2003) model if we apply the term “natural flows” in a strict way, whereas they would be under the more conventional ecosystem service paradigm of Haines-Young and Potschin (2013).