Ecosystem service

Ecosystem services are benefits that ecosystems provide to human well-being, households, communities, and agriculture.

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Quotes

Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems: they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. However, over the past 50 years, fast-growing demands for food, fuel, water and other natural resources have led to an unprecedented degradation of many ecosystem services so that their ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Therefore, reversing ecosystem degradation is one of the great challenges of sustainable development. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all actors in society, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the difficulties is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, it is still unclear what goods, services and activities are sustainable and how they could be identified.
- Adisa Azapagić, "Life Cycle Assessment as a Tool for Sustainable Management of Ecosystem Services". Ecosystem Services. volume 30 of Issues in Environmental Science and Technology. Royal Society of Chemistry. 2010. ISBN 1849730180. (quote from p. 140; edited by Ronald E. Hester and Roy M. Harrison)

... what you can be sure of is that many organisms have declined to the point where they can never do the services for us we want — even if the service is the pleasure of seeing a rare bird.
- Paul Ehrlich, (November 26, 2024)"Paul Ehrlich on the Population Bomb, Climate Change, and the Ethics of Extinction". Skeptic (The Michael Shermer Show # 488). (quote at 30:43 of 1:04:46)

Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides pollination of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature.
- Roy P. Remme, Howard Frumkin, Anne D. Guerry, Abby C. King, Lisa Mandle, Chethan Sarabu, Gregory N. Bratman, B. Giles-Corti, P. Hamel, B. Han, J.L. Hicks, P. James, J.J. Lawler, T. Lindahl, H. Liu, Y. Lu, B. Oosterbroek, B. Paudel, J.F. Sallis, J. Schipperijn, R. Sosič, S. de Vries, B.W. Wheeler, S.A. Wood, T. Wu, and Gretchen C. Daily, (2021). "An ecosystem service perspective on urban nature, physical activity, and health". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, (22). DOI:10.1073/pnas.2018472118.