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"At least 40 per cent of the world's economy and 80 per cent of the needs of the poor are derived from biological resources." — The Convention About Life on Earth (UN Convention on Biodiversity)
Ecosystem functions are a good thing. They keep our air and water clean, help regulate our climate, and provide us with sources of food, shelter, clothing and medicine. They do these things for us, and for all life, if they are healthy. Sometimes the ecosystem functions for free. More often to keep them functioning and healthy, we have to give up competing uses of that ecosystem, such as resource extraction, waste disposal or land development (residential, recreational, transport, industrial). While we often can put a value on these competing uses of the land (for housing, industry etc.) in terms of economic benefits or jobs, we don't know how to assign a value to the ecosystem services that nature provides. This makes it difficult to compare and choose among various uses of the land.
To deal with this challenge, we now have two concepts:
Ecosystem services, according to Ontario's Biodiversity Strategy, are “services that humans derive from ecological functions such as photosynthesis, oxygen production, water purification and so on.”
Natural capital is the ecosystem that produces the goods and services.
The table below provides a listing of ecosystem services and functions. A more detailed list can be found in Appendix A.
| Ecosystem Service | Ecosystem Functions | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Gas regulation | Regulation of atmospheric chemical composition | CO2/O2 balance, O3 for UVB protection, SOx levels. |
| Climate regulation | Regulation of global temperature, precipitation and other climatic processes | Greenhouse gas regulation. |
| Disturbance regulation | Storage, damping and other responses to environmental fluctuations | Storm protection, flood control, drought recovery and other habitat responses, mainly controlled by vegetation structure and landforms. |
| Water regulation | Regulation of hydrological flows. | Water for agriculture, industry, transportation or power generation. |
| Water supply | Storage and retention of water | Storage of water in watersheds, reservoirs and aquifers. |
| Erosion control and sediment retention | Retention of soil within an ecosystem. | Prevention of soil loss by wind, runoff or other processes, storage of silt in lakes and wetlands. |
| Soil formation | Soil formation processes. | Weathering of rock and the accumulation of organic material. |
| Nutrient cycling | Storage, internal cycling, processing and acquisition of nutrients. | Nitrogen Fixation, N, P and other elemental or nutrient cycles. |
| Waste treatment | Recovery of nutrients and removal or breakdown of excess nutrients and compounds. | Waste treatment, pollution control, detoxification. |
| Pollination | Fertilization of flowers. | Providing pollinators for the reproduction of plant populations. |
| Biological control | Population regulation. | Predator control; reduction of herbivory. |
| Refugia | Habitat for resident and transient populations. | Nurseries, migration habitat, over wintering grounds. |
| Food production | Production useable as food. | Fish, game, crops, nuts and fruits. |
| Raw materials | Production useable as raw materials. | Lumber, fuel, fodder. |
| Genetic resources | Sources of unique biological materials and products. | Medicine, products for materials science, resistant genes/strains, ornamental species. |
| Recreation | Opportunities for recreational activities. | Eco-tourism, sport fishing, hunting, hiking, camping. |
| Cultural | Non-commercial uses. | Aesthetic, artistic, educational, spiritual, scientific. |
(from Costanza, et al., 1997)
The average value of all these goods and services, estimated world-wide, is 33 trillion US dollars per year. To put that into perspective, the global gross national product (GNP), a measure of the productivity of all of the world's economies, is around 18 trillion US dollars per year (Costanza, et al., 1997). Some of the values are determined directly, e.g. sport fishing; and others are determined by what it would cost to artificially replace the natural service, e.g. water storage and flood control. For example, when New York City's drinking water fell below standards, the estimated cost to install a filtration plant was $6-8 billion, with annual operating costs of $300 million. Not surprisingly, the city opted to restore the “natural capital” in its watershed at a cost of “only” $660 million (ESA, 2000).
Freshwater wetlands, considered by some as “wastelands”, are actually the second most valuable ecosystem (behind coastal estuaries), with a value of well over 20,000 Canadian dollars per hectare per year (Costanza, et al., 1997).
The net benefits of protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services are significant.
Photography
Bee image by Bill Crins
Over 100,000 different animal species provide free pollination services. One third of human food comes from plants pollinated by wild pollinators. The value of pollination services from wild pollinators in the U.S. alone is estimated at four to six billion dollars per year. – Ecological Society of America
