Primary Source on Ecosystem Services

 This article, written by Robert Costanza and Joshua Farley, is an ecological economist's view on ecosystem services and how they should be incorporated into the market model. They begin by explaining the distinction between what an environmental economists views as how the services should be quantified and placed into the market and how ecological economics differs. They explain how the end goal for an environmental economist's is about efficiency and forces ecosystem services into the market model rather than focusing on the multiple goals of ecological sustainability, just distribution and economic efficiency and gives a strong emphasis to a variety of payment mechanisms to obtain these goals both in the market and non-market. The ecological economist's view is that ecosystems are not just a substitutable commodity but are both stock flow and fund services. They are stock flow because they provide us with varying foods, and resources to be made into products. They are also fund services because all of the stock flow services work together to provide services like climate regulation and water purification. Because of this the services are essential, non substitutable, and poorly understood, making the costs to their provision and protection very real.
      The article goes on to discuss the work the two men have been doing within Brazil on developing a proposal for a payment for ecosystem services system in the Valle do Bravo Watershed. They argue that many ecosystem services within the area should not be privately owned and thus should be identified as "non-rival" as to encourage cooperative benefit provisions and not competitive. They suggest a common property asset trust as an effective way to do this. By making ecosystem services more of a public good and less of a private one, there would be less of a chance of the services being ruined by development or pollution because co-ownership over resources leads to more responsible practices and care of the resource. The cost is also distributed among multiple individuals and not just one person.
      Ecosystem services do not just benefit the environment as a whole through regulation of atmospheric gases and habitat provision but also on a more local level and even to people individually. The article further explains how ecosystem services provide essential benefits to human well being. They provide spiritual and recreational purposes that are very essential to many individuals sanity and overall happiness. Because of that they are like no other market good and should not be treated as such. While it is important to figure out how incorporate them into the market model to help internalize market externalities, we must not just slap a dollar sign on a plot of land and say we will lose this amount of money each year from lack of various services provided. We need a more holistic approach to understanding their true value and benefit in order to be able to manage them appropriately within our capitalist system. Through this approach we will also encourage the creation of another system of measurement of market goods beyond their capital gains and therefore encourage a systemic change within the market entirely.   




Costanza, R. and J. Farley. (2010) Special issue on Payments for Ecosystem Services. Ecological Economics 69