Speaker: Neville Ash
Abstract Ecosystem services are nothing new - modern humans have depended on them for the last 200,000 years. However, the consideration of ecosystem services by science and in policy is a more recent and rapidly evolving development. The concept of ecosystem services grew out of earlier recognition of the benefits that people derive from natural capital, and it is only in the last decade that ecosystem services as a concept and term has become more widely used, following the publications of Daily (1997) and Constanza et al (1997), and with the completion of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005). The MA brought ecosystem services to the attention of the policy community, and provided the most comprehensive consideration and assessment to date of the concept and status of ecosystem services. In addition to a conceptual framework linking the consequences of environmental change to human well-being through ecosystem services, the MA provided a classification which assigned the benefits that people derive from ecosystems into provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services. Key developments in the MA included the central recognition of cultural services - the intangible benefits people derive from ecosystems – as a part of this classification, and the incorporation of ecosystem “goods” as provisioning services alongside other benefits.
Since the completion of the MA, considerable attention has been given to ecosystem services in the scientific literature, in policy fora, and in a range of international initiatives such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), and the proposed Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES). Most recently, discussions over the establishment of an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have confirmed the interests of the policy community to be provided with regularly updated scientific information on ecosystem services, and have the potential to considerably strengthen the interface between the science, policy and management of ecosystem services.
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Daily, G.C. 1997. Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Island Press, Washington.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington.