Ecosystems environmental services

For ecosystems, there is a concept of environmental services (e.g., soil function). Soil conservation provides a range of obvious benefits, including the preservation of land use and fertility, supporting the production of fibers, food, or biofuels. These services have widened over time to encapsulate benefits of carbon sequestration or biodiversity protection. It is relatively easy to place values on the productive capacity in the former examples. It is somewhat harder to find the value of the latter uses, but as the Stern report (Stem 2006) illustrated, it is by no means impossible to calculate the value of, say, an upland peat bog. 

Availability of Biomass from Spontaneous Species The recent poUcy for protecting fragile ecosystems is based on the balancing of natural elements and anthropic activities. In this context, the prospective trend of a further enlargement of protected areas will increase the potential supply of heterogeneous and low-cost biomass. Environmental services devoted to the maintenance of these ecosystems will also be conceived to supply a consistent quantity of raw materials at a very low cost. 

Ecosystem services can be considered as being the goods and services provided by coupled ecological and social systems. They provide our material needs and quality of life, and we all depend on the sustainable use of ecosystems services. The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment has brought the continual capacity for coupled ecological-social systems to deliver eco-systems services into public attention. It states that the ability of many systems to deliver valuable services has been compromised by over-exploitation of several resources and environmental degradation. 

The background methods used for valuing ecosystem services are often similar for ecological and environmental economists. The valuation methods are presented earlier in this chapter. 

Environmental contamination, either from diffuse or point sources, may compromise the ability of ecosystems to provide society with those goods and services that we require. Contamination is also linked to other widely recognised anthropogenic threats to sustainable functioning of our planet, such as the loss of biodiversity. As many soil properties and processes are conferred by soil biota, it is currently widely agreed that biological characteristics should be taken into account when evaluating the quality, or health, of soil [13, 16]. 

Fig. 19 Guidelines for environmental management through a decision support system for ecosystem services and sustainability...

Economic analysis/valuation of specific functions or services provided by the natural system (i.e. the ecosystem) and of the (societal) costs and benefits of the measures proposed to restore these services, contributes to the transparency of the decisions. Concerning the system, a better definition of water services is needed in order to evaluate recovery costs of water uses and environmental costs. The economic analysis should also include a valuation of water and ecosystem services. For instance, the delivery of clean water by the ecosystem (e.g. through its filtering capacity or capacity to degrade contaminants) is one of these services. 

DeBano, L. F., Mann, L. D., and Hamilton, D. A. (1977). Fire s effects on physical and aggregate stability in hydrophobic soil. In Proceedings Symposium on Environmental Conservation Fire and Fuel Management of Mediterranean Ecosystems, Mooney, H. A., and Conrad, C., eds., Palo Alto, CA, August 1-5, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report, pp. 65-74. 

Ecosystem services are the goods and services provided by coupled and ecological social systems. They are at the heart of our quality of life by providing the materials on which we base our lifestyles, and we all inevitably depend on the sustainable use of ecosystem services. The millennium ecosystems assessment brought this to our attention (Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, 2007) by stating that the ability of many ecosystems to deliver valuable services has been compromised by resource over-exploitation and by environmental degradation. 

A critical aspect of integrating sustainability into business is in the area of valuation. How do we know the financial impacts of our decisions How can performing more sustainability help to reduce costs, avoid future costs, increase the company s value proposition, support growth, and so on What are the links between intangibles related to social and environmental performance and a hrm s overall performance What contributes to value creation in the chemical industry How can we reconcile the fact that we may incur costs for performing more sustainably in the short term while the benefits may not be captured until the long term similarly, how do we justify costs associated with our business decisions when the benefits might accrue to others in the value chain We know the value of ecosystem services is both invaluable - that is, our life depends on them - and of no real market value how then should we value ecosystem services in order to protect them for our survival and that of our business institutions This section attempts to offer points of view on these topics. 

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