Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are increasingly incorporated into explicit policy targets and can be an effective tool for informing decisions about the use and management of the planet’s resources, especially when trade-offs and synergies need to be taken into account. The challenge is to find meaningful and robust indicators to quantify ecosystem services, measure changes in demand and supply and predict future direction. This chapter addresses the basic requirements for collecting such observations and data on ecosystem services. Biodiversity regulates the ability of the ecosystem to supply ecosystem services, can be directly harvested to meet people’s material needs, and are valued by societies for its non-tangible contributions to well-being. Societies are deeply embedded within ecosystems, depending on and influencing the ecosystem services they produce. The different types of ecosystem services (provisioning, regulating, and cultural), and their different components (supply, delivery, contribution to well-being, and value) can be monitored at global to local scales. Different data sources are best suited to account for different components of ecosystem services and spatial scales and include: census data at national scales, remote sensing, field-based estimations, community monitoring, and models. Data availability, advantages and limitations of each are discussed. Progress towards monitoring different types of services and gaps are explored. Ways of exploring synergies and trade-offs among services and stakeholders, using scenarios to predict future ecosystem services, and including stakeholders in monitoring ecosystem services are discussed. The need of a network for monitoring ecosystem services to synergise efforts is stressed. Monitoring ecosystem services is vital for informing policy (or decision making) to protect human well-being and the natural systems upon which it relies at different scales. Using this information in decision making across all scales will be central to our endeavours to transform to more sustainable and equitable futures.