Ecosystem Services 101

Author: Ildikó Varga | Date: January 14, 2025

Credit: Ted Erski / Pixabay.

Why does humanity need biodiversity and ecosystem services?

Nature is vital for human survival and a good quality of life. Well-functioning ecosystems provide numerous benefits, such as supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services.

Ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, mountains, deserts, and rivers are made up of interconnected communities where living creatures and organisms — our so-called biodiversity — interact with the air, water, and soil. This biodiversity, encompassing the variety of life within ecosystems, is essential for sustaining life on Earth. Around 75% of global food crops, including fruits and vegetables, depend on animal pollination.

Unfortunately, human activities are threatening biodiversity at an unprecedented scale. Habitat destruction, climate change, overhunting, and overfishing have led to significant biodiversity loss.

As to this, some quick facts:

• 75% of the land has been significantly altered.
• 66% of the ocean is under increasing pressure.
• Over 85% of wetlands have been lost.

These processes endanger countless species by destroying their habitats. Around 25% of assessed species face extinction, with approximately 1 million species being at risk of disappearing within decades unless urgent action is taken. This extinction rate is tens to hundreds of times higher than historical averages over the past 10 million years. Without intervention, an estimated 30-50% of all species could be lost by the middle of the 21st century.

Biodiversity is essential for the stability and resilience of ecosystems, enabling them to adapt to challenges such as climate change, disease, and invasive species. A loss in biodiversity weakens ecosystems, reducing their ability to recover from disruptions and increasing the risk of collapse. This can lead to consequences like soil erosion, which harms agriculture and undermines the ecosystem’s capacity to sustain life. Protecting biodiversity is critical to maintaining healthy ecosystems and safeguarding human life on Earth.

 

Contribution of the ecosystem service concept to restoration

The interdependence between human well-being and the state of nature is evident and is best illustrated through the goods provided by nature, known as ecosystem services. Healthy, diverse ecosystems provide higher-quality and more abundant services, which, in turn, have positive social and economic impacts. In contrast, the reduced service capacity of degraded ecosystems leads to negative consequences.

The ecosystem service concept can provide a framework for conserving and restoring ecosystems to "good condition," as outlined in the Nature Restoration Regulation. It effectively supports biodiversity protection while enhancing ecosystem services. Furthermore, it helps to understand the necessity and multiple benefits of restoration efforts. As a social science tool, it facilitates stakeholder engagement and promotes effective communication.

The analysis of implemented restoration projects has shown a positive correlation between the restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, restoring ecosystem services is more challenging and requires a longer time when compared to biodiversity restoration. The extent of improvement in both biodiversity and ecosystem services depends on the type of ecosystem and the restoration measures applied.

Useful resources

• Meli et al. 2014: Restoration Enhances Wetland Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Supply, but Results Are Context-Dependent.
• Alexander et al. 2016: The relationships between ecological restoration and ecosystem service concept.

 

Grasslands' services — from a different perspective

Grasslands, which cover nearly one-third of the Earth's terrestrial area, have significantly declined over the past century, partly due to a lack of management or abandonment, as well as to their conversion into other land-use types (e.g. croplands). However, in addition to their high biodiversity and social and cultural values, natural and semi-natural grasslands provide multiple services beyond agriculture as part of agricultural systems. These include water supply (both quality and quantity) and flow regulation, erosion prevention, climate regulation (e.g. carbon sequestration, carbon storage, mitigation of greenhouse gas fluxes), pollination, and cultural ecosystem services (related to livestock farming, tourism, hunting, and spiritual values).

Permanent grasslands can store large amounts of carbon in the soil, and their permanent vegetation provides protection against soil erosion, which is closely linked to other services, such as water supply and regulation, as well as soil fertility. Due to their location and extent, grasslands play a unique role in the landscape by reducing water runoff, soil erosion, and soil loss. Additionally, grasslands positively impact agricultural production through pollination and biological control.

Considering current and predicted processes — such as the adverse effects of climate change on crop production, increasing food demand, and rising demand for energy and nutrient inputs — there will be a growing need to utilize land that currently cannot support crop production. From this perspective, the potential role of grasslands in ensuring global food security should be more widely recognized.

Policy decisions should place greater emphasis on grasslands, focusing on how they can be used not only for fodder and meat production but also for biodiversity conservation and other ecosystem services. Moreover, policies should aim to integrate grasslands into agricultural production systems, leveraging their potential to contribute to multifunctional landscapes, biodiversity conservation, food security, and sustainable livelihoods.

 

Incredible ecosystem services provided by pollinators

Pollinators such as bees, butterflies, moths, bats, and birds are of immense importance for the flourishing of ecosystems. They are, most certainly, valuable creatures by themselves; still, from a human perspective, they also deserve a lot of credit for providing a huge variety of direct and indirect ecosystem services we benefit from.

Prominently, by enabling the reproduction of flowering plants, they are of inestimable value in pollinating around 75% of the world's food crops and an even higher percentage of wild plants, supporting both plant and wildlife biodiversity (i.e. provisioning and regulating ecosystem services). Furthermore, through their relationship to plant communities, pollinators indirectly support the maintenance of fundamental ecosystem processes such as soil formation, and water and nutrient cycling, as well as oxygen production. Also indirectly, there are nonmaterial, cultural services — for instance, the contribution to beautiful landscapes from which humans derive aesthetic value, recreation, education, and a sense of belongingness.

However, habitat loss through land-use changes and intensification, the climate crisis, pesticides, the spread of invasive alien species and diseases, as well as pollution, are pushing many pollinator species towards decline. By supporting pollinator populations, we protect the health of ecosystems and species, while simultaneously ensuring that we continue to have access to diverse and nutritious foods.

Therefore, it is imperative to raise awareness and take action to preserve pollinators and their essential contributions to us and our planet. We need to work incessantly to maintain and create safe habitats, mitigate the climate crisis, avoid the use of harmful chemicals, tackle invasive alien species and plant native flowers to support these powerful species!