Ecosystem Services

This chapter summarizes the EcoSummit 2000 working group activity and consensus building for the theme of ecosystem services. An interdisciplinary team of environmentally focused professionals spent two days during the EcoSummit to tackle semantics, present case studies, and share perspective on the importance of ecosystem services towards understanding and solving environmental problems in the 21st century. Solutions to environmental problems are both technical and social in nature. Ecosystem services define the natural processes of the biosphere, and are responsible for sustaining human life. In a world where the scale of human activity became truly global, the significance and role of ecosystem services for assessing and managing human activity are universally self evident. Ecosystem services in terms of definitions and connotations along with the discussion of the road to follow explicitly build ecosystem services into the structure of future human existence. Such a road needs to be taken with the biosphere if humankind is to escape the current self-destructive path. Key outcomes of the working group are the recognition of the interplay among global concerns and local initiatives, thinkers, doers and stakeholders, and central authority and distributed activity. A first draft of a decision tree interrelating needs of ecosystem services with the wants of human development is presented for adaptation and to evolve the best practices for sustainability in the future.