Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem Services

1. ES Paradigm

   • Benefits provided by ecosystems that contribute to making human life possible and worth living
   • Provisional services such as food, water, wood and fuel
   • Regulatory services such as climate, flood and disease regulation
   • Cultural services such as aesthetic, spiritual and recreational ecosystem aspects
   • Supported by supportive services such as nutrient cycling, soil formation, primary production etc.
   • Sukhdev et al (2014) 'nature is often invisible in the economic choices we make and we have been steadily drawing down natural capital'
   • UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA)
     • First analysis of the UK's natural environment in terms of ecosystem services contributed to society and economic prosperity

2. Critiques of ES

   • Arsel and Buscher (2012) 'the need for nature to be made amenable to a new breed of investor'
   • Extinction tourism - increase in tourism due to a rise in extinction rates, offering experiences that may not be around for much longer
   • The dualism of nature and society - a social construction of nature
   • Anthropocentrism - the belief that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, considered to have moral status to other animals
   • Robertson (2011) 'remaking of a world into a collection of ES is the creation and assignment of value'
   • Equivalence?
   • Turning nature into a commodity
   • Forget about the intrinsic value of other species
   • Values are not sustainable and outcome is not necessarily a sustainable society
   • Preference for fundamental changes in our economy

3. ES Valuation

   • Direct Market Valuation for provisioning services
     • Based on the price
     • Cost based on replacement and restoration costs
   • Revealed Preference Approaches - diverse ES including cultural services
     • Travel cost method
   • Stated Preference Approaches
     • Contingent valuation
     • Choice modelling

4. More-than-Human Geographies

   • Gibbs (2009) 'to move away from anthropocentric understandings of nature'
   • Adoption of a non-human view of the world
   • Lorimer (2012) 'challenging privileged place of the human subject in accounts of environmental change'
   • Indigenous ontologies and integration of cultural values of the land and environment
   • Cosmopolitics where non-humans are included as actors in political areas
   • Biodiversity conservation
   • Awareness of extinction in nature

5. Shared Values

   • ES have degraded over the last few decades because of underestimation of their importance
   • Valuing nature is understanding how important nature is to human society rather than putting a price on it
   • Transcendental values - principles and desired end-states
   • Plural values - shared or multiple motivations