An Assessment of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in Europe

ALASTAIR FITTER, THOMAS ELMQVIST, ROY HAINES-YOUNG, MARION POTSCHIN, ANDREA RINALDO, HEIKKI SETÄLÄ, SUSANNA STOLL-KLEEMANN, MARTIN ZOBEL AND JOHN MURLIS

ABSTRACT

Ecosystem services are the benefits humankind derives from the workings of the natural world. These include most obviously the supply of food, fuels and materials, but also more basic processes such as the formation of soils and the control and purification of water, and intangible ones such as amenity, recreation and aesthetics. Taken together, they are crucial to survival and the social and economic development of human societies. Though many are hidden, their workings are now a matter of clear scientific record. However, the integrity of the systems that deliver these benefits cannot be taken for granted, and the process of monitoring them and of ensuring that human activity does not place them at risk is an essential part of environmental governance, not solely at a global scale but also regionally and nationally.

In this chapter, we assess the importance of ecosystem services in a European context, highlighting those that have particular importance for Europe, and we set out what is known about the contribution biodiversity makes to each of them. We then consider pressures on European ecosystem services and the measures that might be taken to manage them.

One of the key insights from this work is that all ecosystems deliver a broad range of services, and that managing an ecosystem primarily to deliver one service will reduce its ability to provide others. A prominent current example of this is the use of land to produce biofuels. There is an urgent need to develop tools for the effective valuation of ecosystem services, to achieve sustainable management of the landscape to deliver multiple services.

1 Introduction

1.1 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Why this Topic Matters Now

The past 50 years have seen an unprecedented human impact on ecosystems and on their biodiversity. Current rates of species extinction substantially exceed background extinction rates: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 12% of bird species, 23% of mammals, 32% of amphibians and 25% of conifers are threatened with extinction. Human use of natural resources has grown substantially in this period: roughly half of useable terrestrial land is now devoted to grazing livestock or growing crops. That expansion has been at the expense of natural habitat, so that between a quarter and a half of all primary production is now diverted to human consumption. Other major threats to biodiversity include the introduction of non-indigenous species, pollution, climate change and over-harvesting. In marine ecosystems, over-exploitation of stocks has been the most severe cause of ecosystem degradation and local extinction.

These changes have considerable implications for human society. Living organisms, interacting with their environment in the complex relationships that characterise ecosystems, deliver important, and in some cases crucial and unsubstitutable, benefits to humankind. Most obviously, organisms provide goods in the form of food, fuel and materials for building, but they also deliver other, less apparent services. For example, insects, especially bees, play an important role in the pollination of plants, including staple food crops, and micro-organisms recycle or render harmless the waste produced by human society. Both the bees and the microbes operate within and rely on ecosystems for their survival.

These natural services are of enormous value to human society. Many of the services are irreplaceable: for example, we have no way of providing food for the human population except through the use of natural systems involving soil, soil organisms and crop plants, nor of providing drinking water, except through the operation of the water cycle, which depends critically on the activities of organisms. The maintenance of ecosystems, therefore, must be an essential part of the survival strategy for human societies.

Despite these benefits, investment in conservation does not match the scale of the benefits received from ecosystem services. It was noted by David Pearce that 'actual expenditures on international ecosystem conservation appear to be remarkably small and bear no relationship to the willingness to pay figures obtained in the various stated preference studies'. Pearce concluded 'despite all the rhetoric, the world does not care too much about biodiversity conservation'. This disconnection may arise in part because the links between biodiversity and ecosystem function (and consequently to ecosystem services) remain new areas of research: this chapter assesses the evidence for these links, focussing on ecosystem services that are of major concern for Europe.

The power of economic analysis in policy-making is such that argument about policy is typically constructed in a major part through the language of costs and benefits. There is an urgent need to address the chronic underinvestment in conservation of biodiversity and to ensure that future decisions do not lead to an unacceptable loss. This means that it is essential that the value of biodiversity in promoting the delivery of essential and valuable services is expressed strongly (in both economic and other terms) in those areas of decision-making where economic analysis is itself strongest.

1.2 The Current Assessment

The principal focus of assessment of ecosystem services to date has been at a global level. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) continues to be a major influence on the development of a global regime for the protection of biodiversity through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At a national scale, UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), which commenced in mid-2009 and will report in 2011, is expected to have a significant impact on the UK's environmental management strategy. There is also an urgent need to advance the development of regional measures for protecting biodiversity and ensuring the continual flow of ecosystem services. The assessment on which this chapter is based was commissioned by the Council of the European Academies Science...