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Natural Capital and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

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Debating Nature's Value

Abstract

Recent recognition of the reliance of human economies on natural resources has been a crucial achievement for policymaking. However, there remains a gap in the knowledge of the full extent of the connection between human economies and natural resources. This is relevant for policymaking as understanding who affects the generation of ecosystem services (called ‘providers’ or ‘suppliers’) and who benefits from ecosystem services (‘beneficiaries’ or ‘consumers’) allows assessments of the costs and benefits from any given policy, including the distributional consequences across affected parties. In this chapter, we explore progress towards furthering this particular gap in knowledge, reflecting on a number of conceptual ecosystem service assessment frameworks developed in the last decade, including the one deployed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a recently established intergovernmental body; and its efforts to inform policy formulation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ecosystems sustain human life through ‘ecosystem services’ (Guerry et al. [2]). Ecosystem services are the conditions and processes of ecosystems that generate—or help generate—benefits for people. These benefits result from the interactions among plants, animals, and microbes in the ecosystem, as well as biotic, abiotic, and human-engineered components of social-ecological systems. Ecosystem services are produced along the full spectrum of heavily managed ecosystems (e.g. agroecosystems) to ecosystems with low human imprint (TEEB [5]).

  2. 2.

    In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted the SDGs as the global development agenda seeking to eradicate poverty and ensure environmental sustainability by 2030. The framework includes 17 goals and comprises 169 individual targets, which focus holistically on environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainable development [16].

  3. 3.

    https://www.cbd.int/sp/targets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK

    Lenke Balint

  2. Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Aled Jones

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  1. Lenke Balint
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Correspondence to Lenke Balint .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

    Victor Anderson

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Balint, L., Jones, A. (2018). Natural Capital and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. In: Anderson, V. (eds) Debating Nature's Value. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99244-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99244-0_2

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