On Integrating the Cost of Ecosystem Service Loss into the Valuation of Ecosystem Benefits

This paper suggests the unilaterally-defined value concept of ecosystem services as 'benefits' – also referred to as 'Nature's contributions to people' in recent IPBES research – should be counterbalanced by a transparent and valid assessment of the costs from anthropogenically degrading land-use change. The authors argue that conversions from temperate forest to "built" environments result in ecosystem service losses that are more than 200 times greater than the economic benefits. These losses derive from degradation in the four principal supporting and regulating ecosystem services/functions. The loss of the cooling effect from evapotranspiration, replaced by warming from sensible heat creation in built environments, results in energetic impacts that are two orders of magnitude greater than those from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. New valuation methodologies highlight the urgency, for all landscape planners and planning departments, as a precondition for planetary sustainability, of incorporating appropriate value relations and the importance of orienting toward greener, more thermodynamically sustainable landscapes.