Preliminary text – resource to be developed

Many developing countries, and particularly those in Africa, are dependent on non-renewable natural resources (eg minerals) to underpin their economies, and most are dependent on renewable resources (eg soils, forests, water) to sustain rural populations and livelihoods. The concept of ecosystem services has emerged in recent years to describe the collective benefits that people enjoy from a multitude of resources and processes that are supplied by natural ecosystems. They include, for example, flood protection by coastal mangroves, the pollination provided by insects, climate regulation of forests, products like clean drinking water and processes such as the decomposition of wastes. Although often unrecognized, many of these goods and services represent nature’s value to economic sectors and most forms of human activities on the planet. Ecosystem services are estimated globally to be worth trillions of dollars every year.

The concept of ecosystem services was popularised and defined formally by the United Nations 2004 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (www.millenniumassessment.org), a four-year study involving more than 1,300 scientists worldwide. This grouped ecosystem services into four broad categories:

• provisioning, such as the production of food and water;
• regulating, such as the control of climate and disease;
• supporting, such as nutrient cycles and crop pollination; and
• cultural, such as spiritual and recreational benefits.

As human populations grow, so do the resource demands imposed on ecosystems and the impacts of our global footprint. Natural resources are not invulnerable and infinitely available. The environmental impacts of processes or materials resulting from human activities are becoming more evident. For example, air and water quality are increasingly deteriorating, seas are being overfished, the extent of pests and diseases is expanding beyond their historical boundaries, and deforestation is leading to more and worse downstream flooding. There is an urgent need to address long-term ecosystem health and its role in enabling human habitation and economic activity. To help inform planners and decision-makers, many ecosystem services are being assigned economic values, often based on the cost of replacement with anthropogenic alternatives. The ongoing challenge of prescribing economic value to nature, for example through biodiversity banking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity_banking), is prompting transdisciplinary shifts in how we recognize and manage the environment, social responsibility, business opportunities, and our future as a species.

There is growing urgency to find policy levers and sustainable market frameworks that would help guard against ecosystem goods and services (EGS) degradation far more effectively at the level of root causes and at a large scale. Many of the policies and practices that affect EGS are local, but they are often embedded in or influenced by a broader international policy context, as in the case of tropical forests and climate change. A recent report on the Prospects for Mainstreaming Ecosystem Goods and Service in International Policies, produced by a joint Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, draws attention to the influence of international policy mechanisms that often define the framework for policy-making and action at the national or local level. While some of these included environmental and biodiversity policies, others have no explicit environmental dimension, even if they have a major impact on EGS and, through that, an impact on human well-being.

The report identifies the relevance of key international policy areas such as trade and investment, development assistance and climate change to EGS in the context of poverty reduction; points out problems; and recommends specific measures that can help build consideration of EGS into future policies. Many involve the application of tools that have already been proven at the pilot scale and beyond, but in order to live to their full potential, they need to be mainstreamed. This requires detailed technical work, building the right institutional capacity and political will. This can be challenging, but institutions behind international policies must take up the challenge.

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a key tool for environmental mainstreaming in policies, plans and programmes. The OECD DAC provides useful advice on addressing ecosystem services in undertaking SEAs (click here to access)