Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

This chapter focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecosystem services can be defined as ‘nature's contributions to people’. They represent the plethora of benefits that humans receive from both natural and managed ecosystems, including things like the production of consumable goods, non-consumable services, and cultural services. We could just as well define ecosystem services as the collection of biological processes that are required to sustain human life and provide a good standard of living on Earth. Despite their indisputable importance, many people do not know about ecosystem services; nor do they understand or appreciate their value. The chapter then looks at the history and types of ecosystem services. It also considers the biotic control of ecosystem services before examining ecosystem markets and payments for ecosystem services.