This document discusses payment for ecosystem services (PES). It begins by defining ecosystem services and the four main categories. It then discusses the concept of valuing nature and complexity in determining ecosystem services. It questions whether the value of services like water filtration changes if alternatives become cheaper. It provides estimates of billions of dollars spent through PES programs and biodiversity funding. It concludes that while PES has limited impact currently, it could evolve but decisions should focus on conservation, not cost-benefit analysis, and protect nature overall rather than short-term gains. Caution is needed to avoid trading long-term success for marginal short gains through ecosystem services.

1. PAYMENT FOR ECOSYSTEM
SERVICES
ARSI UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
SPECIALIZATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
RISK MANAGEMENT (EDRM)

2. OVERVIEW
1. What are Ecosystem Services (ES)?
2. „The economics of ES“
3. Are direct Payment for ES (PES) a useful and
ethical tool?

3. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (ES)
 ES consist of flows of materials, energy, and
information from natural capital stocks which combine
with manufactured and human capital services to
produce human welfare (Robert Constanza, 1997)
 ES are the beneficial outcomes, for the natural
environment or people, which result from ecosystem
functions (OECD, 2010)
 The 4 ES categories of the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment: Provisioning services, Regulating services,
Cultural services, and Supporting services (MA, 2005)

4. THE CONCEPT OF ES IN
CONSERVATION POLITICS
 Can it be justified to ask for the usefulness of
nature?
 Complexity: One ecosystem – how many
services?
 Spatial and temporal scale
"If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we
like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard
seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the
first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
Aldo Leopold, 1953

5. „THE ECONOMICS OF ES“
Just a thought…
Does the value of the ES „water filtration“
changes, if over time the construction of a
water filtration plant and its maintenance
(at least for some years…) becomes cheaper
than the amount of money neccessary to
conserve the wetland providing the service?

6. PAYMENT FOR ECOSYSTEM
SERVICES (PES)

7. PAYMENT FOR BIODIVERSITY
 Estimated amount of money channelled by
national PES programs in China, Costa Rica,
Mexico, the UK and the US alone: Over USD 6.53
billion (per year?)
 Bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA)
to biodiversity-related activities of the OECD
Development Assistance Committee (DAC)
members in 2007: USD 3.5 billion.
Source: OECD, 2009

8. CONCLUSION
 Today limited impact of PES, but the concept has
a potential to evolve
 All depends on decision-making process and
objective (and its communication): Conservation
efforts have to be for the sake of nature as a
whole – Payment for Biodiversity!
 No cost-benefit-analysis to determine need for
conservation, but ecological and ethical
foundation of the decison-making process

9. All of this is not to deny a role for ecosystem services in
our general efforts to protect nature. Individual ecosystem
services will occasionally prove to be useful bargaining
chips in specific conservation plans and, as such, can
meaningfully support programmes aimed at protecting
nature for nature’s sake. However, to avoid trading in
significant long-term conservation successes for marginal
short-term gains, philosophical clarity is essential and
caution is needed. When we employ the aid of ecosystem
services to help pay the bills of conservation, we must
make it abundantly clear that our overall mission is to
protect nature, not to make it turn a profit.
Douglas J. McCauley, 2006