The discussion starter for the 2012 Climbeco summer meeting, Ängelholm, Sweden.

1. Ecosystem services
The 2012 Climbeco critiques
Sarah Cornell
Stockholm Resilience Centre

2. “There are increasing opportunities for the gritty but
urgently-needed discussions about the
purpose, scope, tacit assumptions, shortcomings
and future challenges of the ecosystem services
concept.
If you see one, do join in!”

3. “There are increasing opportunities for the gritty but
urgently-needed discussions about the
purpose, scope, tacit assumptions, shortcomings
and future challenges of the ecosystem services
concept.
If you see one, do join in!”
I base my view that these discussions are needed on my
own transdisciplinary research trajectory

4. The concept
• Transdisciplinary (ecology + economics + ???)
• Evolving theoretical basis

5. See my Procedia 2011 discussion
Ecosystem Services:
The timeline of concept uptake
First proposed analysisof the economic value of „nature‟s services‟ Westman 1977
1980s
Attention to the unsubstitutability of living resources, unlike other Ehrlich & Mooney 1983
economic resources
„Natural capital‟ – a focus on „global account‟ valuations, quantification Costanza& Daly 1992
Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1992
Policy shift – „integrating ecology‟ into natural resource management Brown& Macleod 1996
Environmental economics – marginal valuations for inclusion in cost- Pearce et al. 1996
benefit analysis
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA): global picture of MA 2005
environmental degradation, biodiversity loss – risks of serious impacts
to society (but not framed in economic terms)
Potsdam initiative of G8+5 nations initiates major study, „The G8 Summit 2007
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ and commits partners Sukhdev et al. 2008
to create financial mechanisms for „ecosystem services‟ markets.
ten Brink et al.2009.
Now
Economics – specifically, monetary valuation – has a
pivotal geopolitical role in ecosystem conservation.

6. Note the differences – one is framed in terms of the environment, the
other is human-centred. This tension (or split) is evident in much of the
ecosystem services discourse.
Definition(s)
“the conditions and processes through which
natural ecosystems, and the species that make
them up, sustain and fulfill human life”
Daily, 1997
“the benefits to humans that well-
functioning ecosystems provide”
MA 2005

7. Ecosystem:
A unit consisting of a community of
organisms and their environment
„Stable‟ unit with dynamic relationships
within community and
with surrounding environment
plants animals microorganisms

8. Physical controls Ecosystem
Structure analysis
Processes
Ecosystem functions
Coastal habitat example
from Thom et al. 2005

9. Making the leap –
Functions  Service Provision
de Groot et al.‟s (2002) typology of
ecosystem functions:
• 4 functions (categories used in MA 2005)
• provisioning, regulating, supporting, cultural
• 23 sub-functions
• 37 goods and services derived
The Adam & Eve paradigm:
“be fruitful and increase in number;
fill the earth and subdue it…”

10. Ecosystem Function Ecosystem Process and Goods and Services
Components
Regulation functions Maintenance of essential
ecological processes
and life support processes
Gas regulation Biogeochemical cycling UVb protection by ozone
Climate regulation Influence of land-cover Maintenance of a favourable
vegetation type climate
Water supply Filtering, retention, and storage Provision of water for
of water consumption
Habitat (supporting) Providing habitat for plant and
functions animal species
Niche availability Maintenance of biological and
Refugium function genetic diversity (and hence
most other functions)
Production functions Provision of food and fibre
Raw materials Conversion of solar energy into Fuel, structural materials
edible plants and animals
Information functions Providing opportunities for
cognitive development Use of nature as motive in
Cultural and artistic information books, film, and painting

11. de Groot et al.
proposed this in 2002
To discuss:
• What is the basis of inclusion or definition of these different categories?
• What are the implications of showing the correspondence of services
to functions in this way?
• How do these categories relate to ecology? And to economics?

12. By 2005, a major international
synthesis effort had produced this…
First thing: note the power of an
impressively complex and symmetrical image…
Secondly, note the gaps and loose articulation.
Third, note the strong, narrow and arguably culturally
biased overarching expression of well-being.
Do you agree with it? Who proposed it?
Where was the debate?

13. institutions and
human judgments
determining
management/restoration (use of) services
Ecosystems and Biodiversity
feedback between
value perception and
Biophysical use of ecosystem
Structure services
or Process Human wellbeing
(socio-cultural context)
Function
Service
Benefit(s)
(Economic)
The concept is being refined – Value
see the TEEB pathway
(de Groot et al., 2010)

14. What is new in TEEB?
“An important difference we adopt here, as compared to the
MA, is the omission of Supporting Services such as nutrient
cycling and food-chain dynamics, which are seen in TEEB as a
subset of ecological processes.
Instead, the Habitat Service has been identified as a
separate category to highlight the importance of ecosystems to
provide habitat for migratory species (eg, as nurseries) and
gene-pool “protectors” (eg, natural habitats allowing natural
selection processes to maintain the vitality of the gene pool).
The availability of these services is directly dependent on the
state of the habitat (habitat requirements) providing the
service.”
(de Groot et al., 2010)

15. ECOSYSTEM SOCIAL SYSTEM
social-ecological system
A. TEEB interlinkages and interactions
Structure
Function
Services
Benefits
Process Values
Production Provisioning eg:
Habitat Regulation Regulating food, raw materials,
Information Cultural flood prevention,
underpinned by recreation
Habitat services
B. „Oxfam Doughnut‟ Social foundation:
Environmental ‘ceiling’: meeting human needs
recognising and respecting and avoiding critical
Earth system boundaries human deprivations
C. DPSIR Pressure Driving force
State
of environment Impact
Response

16. The content

17. What is
economics?
Economics is the study of how individuals and groups
make decisions with limited resources
so as to best satisfy their wants, needs, and desires
(Mike Moffatt, U Western Ontario)
Values, preferences (and attitudes)
Production, distribution, consumption
of goods and services
Equity, efficiency, effectiveness
(and legitimacy)

18. Key role of assumptions:
Equilibrium
Perfect knowledge, rationality
Fixed preferences
Ceteris paribus
Opportunity cost
How do these relate
to properties of
ecosystems?
Sen, AK, Last AGM and Quirk R (1986) Prediction and Economic Theory [and Discussion]
Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 407 3-23

19. Why is there so much unsustainability?
Externalities matter –
Costs (or benefits) that are
external to the market
eg,the price of fertilizer does not include the
cost of water remediation
A consequence of the fact that nobody owns
the natural environment can be that it is valued
at zero…
(Pearce, Markandya and Barbier)
… but environmental costs can be very significant

20. Why is there so much unsustainability?
Market failure
The economics of pollution – pollution can be understood as an externality problem and
a market failure.
 Identification of the ‘optimal level’ of pollution for marketable permits
• The Coase theorem on trading externalities (transaction costs, property rights) – will it
work in practice?
•Pigouvian taxation – taxing ‘bads’
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ – Nobody or everybody
owns the natural environment
Exploiting these resources gives immediate benefit to an
individual exploiter
The damage to the environment is shared among all of
humanity Hardin, Science (1968)
Thus it makes sense for the individual to exploit more…

21. What are values?
(Raffaelli et al. 2009)

22. What are values?
attitudes
beliefs
feelings
preferences
(Raffaelli et al. 2009)

23. How do we measure values?
The tools of environmental economics:
• “Willingness to pay”
• “Willingness to accept compensation” Stated preferences
• Contingent valuation
• Shadow pricing Revealed preferences
• Travel costs
• Hedonic pricing
Surveys of individual preferences,
aggregated in various ways to societal level
Benefit transfer – adapting an estimate of benefits from some
other context
www.ecosystemvaluation.org/dollar_based.htm

24. See Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1992, Turner 1992
Ecocentric value?
Where economics works . . . . . . . . Non-market economic
value
Market value

25. To discuss:
• How ‘good’ is the integration of
ecology and economics?
• How might we recognise good
assessments of ecosystem services?
Weick (1999): epistemological commitments
encourage „monologues that overwhelm
rather than dialogues that reconcile‟
Crabbypotamuschimaera © DavidOwens, via www.worth1000.com

26. The context

27. What might affect the value of
Ecosystem Services?
Scarcity, Substitutability… and
Society itself
Science is currently showing us that rather than making marginal
exchanges from a very big quantity of natural capital, we are taking
quite large chunks from a depleting supply.

28. Land surface
Image from Nova

29. River water
Vorosmarty and Sahagian (2000) Bioscience 50 753-765

30. Coastal change LOICZ 2002
Aerosol loadings Heintzenberg
et al., 2003

31. Temperature change (big dots = 1°C change)
IPCC 2007 AR4: Scientific Basis

32. The global policy context embeds
economic valuation
CBD – the Ecosystem Approach, and moves towards PES
The G8+5 nations agreed to the Potsdam Initiative

33. But does economics work for these situations?
Farley J (2008) Valuing Natural Capital: The Limits of Complex Valuation in Complex Systems.

34. Who decides the values, and
how?
Multicriteria analysis – Participatory deliberative processes
more than money

35. “Scientific education involves not simply the apprehension of certain
facts, but also the development of particular intellectual skills and
virtues, and capacities of perception.
The trained ecologist… is able to see hear and even smell in a way
that a person who lacks such training cannot. …At this level,
there is a relationship between a scientific training and ethical
values. A scientific training can issue not only in the traditional
intellectual excellencies – in the capacity to distinguish good from
bad arguments and so on – but also in the capacity to perceive and
feel wonder at the natural world.
For that reason, the ecologist may be able to make not merely good
judgments about the make-up of different ecosystems, but also
good judgments about their value.”
O‟Neill, J. (1993) Ecology, policy and politics: Human well-
being and the natural world. Routledge. p160

36. Spash and Vatn 2006 – values are complex things:
“values are found which represent social and moral
commitments of a non-consequentialist and non-utilitarian
kind, and the context within which values arise is
highly relevant to their expression”
Banzhaf 2010 – decision-makers do not use the evidence…

37. Securing our Future - UK SD Strategy 2005

38. That’s it for now.
Questions?

39. What are your thoughts about
ecosystem services?
Does ecosystem services have to
be about money?
Does it matter if we define the value of our
ecosystems in money terms?
What alternatives are there?