Outlining a new way of valuing ecosystems from the point of view of the services they provide, the report draws on the 'ecosystem services framework' set out in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The MA alerted the international community to the rapid global decline in biodiversity, revealing that out of 24 ecosystem services, 15 are in serious decline and five hang in the balance.
The WRI report, "Restoring Nature's Capital: an Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services" spells out how all human activities - whether undertaken by large corporations or individuals - depend on the healthy continuation of these ecosystem services. The authors set out an economic argument for organisations to invest in these services, leading the way with an "Action Agenda" designed to encourage governments, businesses and civil society to play an active part in reversing the degradation of ecosystems.
"There is a growing appetite for thinking about ecosystems in a new way," Janet Ranganathan, one of the report's two lead authors and director of people and ecology at WRI told environmentalresearchweb. "Rather than just considering the impacts of development on the environment, we want people to see what ecosystems provide that actually underpins development."
The report spells out four categories of ecosystems services: provisioning services (such as food, water, minerals), which are understood and valued the most; regulating services (such as water filtration and storm protection), which are typically profoundly undervalued; cultural services (recreational, spiritual and aesthetic); and supporting services (such as soil formation, water and nutrient cycling), which underpin all the other services.
Traditionally, says the report, decisions taken by governments, companies and development agencies are directed at increasing the supply of those services that have marketable value - i.e. the provisioning services - and are taken in ignorance of the trade-offs, namely the reduced capacity of the affected ecosystems to provide services in the other three categories.
The authors contend that this approach worked as long as the services remained abundant and presented no impediments to development, but that this is often no longer the case. It is therefore in decision-makers' interests, they point out, to assess the risks and opportunities of their decisions in terms of the effects on all ecosystems services.
The Action Agenda calls for an increase in the availability of information on ecosystem services and for the balance to be redressed in favour of local rights to resources and local voices in decision making. It also calls for decisions to be managed across local, regional, national and international levels.
The target readership, said Ranganathan, is government ministers and civil servants working in economy, development, planning and poverty reduction, as well as business leaders. So far, she said, feedback has been positive.
"It will take time," she acknowledged. "But civil society and investors are starting to care about this. We'd like to see at least three government institutions incorporate the ecosystem services approach in their development planning and the ecosystem services framework in their decision-making. And we're working with a number of multi-nationals. Revealing their dependence on ecosystems services provides a very compelling argument. We aim to rewire the way that decisions are made."