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An example of an ecosystem service is pollination, here by a honey bee on avocado crop. Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems, when functioning well, offer such things as provision of food, natural pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, or flood ...
Ecological goods and services (EG&S) are the economical benefits (goods and services) arising from the ecological functions of ecosystems. Such benefits accrue to all living organisms, including animals and plants, rather than to humans alone. However, there is a growing recognition of the importance to society that ecological goods and ...
Ecosystem valuation is an economic process which assigns a value (either monetary, biophysical, or other) to an ecosystem and/or its ecosystem services.By quantifying, for example, the human welfare benefits of a forest to reduce flooding and erosion while sequestering carbon, providing habitat for endangered species, and absorbing harmful chemicals, such monetization ideally provides a tool ...
Biodiversity plays a major role in the productivity and functioning of ecosystems, affects their ability to provide ecosystem services. [2] For example, biodiversity is a source of food, medication, and materials used in industry. Recreation and tourism are also examples of human economic activities that rely on these benefits.
The economic value of natural capital and ecosystem services is accepted by mainstream environmental economics, but is emphasized as especially important in ecological economics. Ecological economists may begin by estimating how to maintain a stable environment before assessing the cost in dollar terms.
The basic conceptualization of nature from the perspective of environmental economics is that manufactured capital can be used as a substitute for natural capital. [13] The definition of PES provided by environmental economics is the most popular: a voluntary transaction between a service buyer and service seller that takes place on the condition that either a specific ecosystem service is ...
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
The economic value of 17 ecosystem services for the entire biosphere (calculated in 1997) has an estimated average value of US$33 trillion per year. [19] These ecological economic values are not currently included in calculations of national income accounts, the GDP and they have no price attributes because they exist mostly outside of the ...