Executive Summary: Ecosystem services – The multiple benefits provided to society by ecosystems have been developing as a branch of science and policy since the late 1980s. The ‘ecosystems approach’, a planning paradigm founded on the basis of ecosystem services and the optimisation of benefits to their many beneficiaries (including future generations), has been promoted by various international bodies including the Commission on Biological Diversity. Significantly, the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) integrated various strands of ecosystem service science into a standardised set of ‘services’, generically applicable across habitat types and geographical zones…
Background: Ecosystem services describe the multiple beneficial ‘services’ derived by society from ecosystems. These services are many and substantial, underpinning basic human health and survival needs as well as supporting economic activities, the fulfilment of potential and enjoyment of life. The essence of the ‘ecosystems approach’ – that is, management of whole ecosystems and their benefits using the framework of ecosystem services – is to determine multiple, simultaneous benefits, such that realisation of one benefit is not achieved through the inadvertent degradation of other benefits with net harm to other beneficiaries…
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