How useful to biodiversity conservation are ecosystem services-based approaches?

doi:10.1017/CBO9781316178904.009

8 - How useful to biodiversity conservation are ecosystem services-based approaches?

from Part II - Applying frameworks for water management and biodiversity conservation under an ecosystem services-based approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015

Edited by

Iain J. Gordon and

Craig Leisher: Affiliation:
The Nature Conservancy
Julia Martin-Ortega: Affiliation:
The James Hutton Institute, Scotland
Robert C. Ferrier: Affiliation:
The James Hutton Institute, Scotland
Iain J. Gordon: Affiliation:
The James Hutton Institute, Scotland
Shahbaz Khan: Affiliation:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France

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Summary

8.1 INTRODUCTION

De Groot (1992), Daily (1997), and Costanza et al. (1997) were seminal publications in developing an approach based on ecosystem services that has come to dominate biodiversity conservation (see Chapter 2 for an overview of the term's evolution). The thinking these authors helped to pioneer has become a success by many measures. There are now more than 100 universities with programmes focused on ecosystem services research, and in 2013 in Europe alone, 28 universities offered Master's degrees in Ecosystem Services (www.mastersportal.eu). The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and Fauna and Flora International all have ecosystem services programmes and projects.

The conservation world has a history of embracing new approaches that later prove to have fewer benefits than anticipated. Initial exuberance for an approach is often followed by a reassessment of the approach. Integrated conservation and development projects (Sanjayan & Shen 1997 versus McShane & Wells 2004), biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al. 2000 versus Kareiva & Marvier 2003), and a landscape-level approach (Noss 1983 versus Sayer et al. 2013) are several examples. Of the 21 approaches in use by conservation organizations in 2002 (Redford et al. 2003), only half are still prominently mentioned as approaches on the websites of the same conservation organizations that used them a decade ago (Box 8.1). Conservation is a fundamentally optimistic endeavour that welcomes big, new ideas. Ecosystem services are perhaps the biggest of the current new ideas in conservation.

The attractiveness of ecosystem services-based approaches comes, inter alia, from their potential value to conservation; the approaches highlight the often-overlooked goods and services that nature provides and helps inform environmental decision-making (Fisher et al. 2009). Ecosystem services-based approaches make the ‘invisible’ benefits of nature more visible and make the link between the well-being of nature and the well-being of people explicit (core element 1 in Chapter 2).

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Type: Chapter
Information: Water Ecosystem Services
A Global Perspective
, pp. 65 - 70
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316178904.009 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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