Ecosystem services: Key concepts and applications

Summary

There has been a growing public interest in the role and value of natural ecosystems and how they contribute to our quality of life and to human wellbeing. Ecosystems services and their continued provision underpin human existence, health and prosperity.

Governments, communities and natural resource managers are taking a broader ecosystem approach to decision making for natural resource management issues that can achieve multiple benefits for landowners and society. Biodiversity is central to the production of ecosystem services; it is the direct source of services, such as food and fibre, and underpins others, such as clean water and air, through the role of organisms in energy and material cycles.

This paper provides an overview of the concept of ecosystem services and how they are valued. There are both use values and non-use values that comprise the total economic value, including both the intrinsic values of ecosystems and biodiversity and the market values of goods and services.

This paper also addresses new opportunities for developing markets for previously undervalued ecosystem services, and gives examples of where an ecosystem approach has lead to the achievement of multiple outcomes.