ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the development of the concept of ecosystem services and its implications for the environmental governance. It focuses on the nature of ecosystem services and the various attempts that have been made to calculate the contribution these services make to human well-being and social welfare. Social practices are well-defined patterns of behaviour reflecting knowledge accumulated over time and often cast in the form of norms or ethical principles. Public policies in the form of subsidies and taxes also play a role in efforts to avoid or mitigate commoditizing ecosystem services. In a good many cases the net effect of these policies is actually the reverse. The problem here is to direct attention to the range and importance of the services that ecosystems provide over and above the traditional commodities, such as soil and water to grow crops, trees that can be turned into wood products and minerals that have a variety of industrial uses.
