Opinion
Biodiversity and ecosystem services: a multilayered relationship

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The relationship between biodiversity and the rapidly expanding research and policy field of ecosystem services is confused and is damaging efforts to create coherent policy. Using the widely accepted Convention on Biological Diversity definition of biodiversity and work for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment we show that biodiversity has key roles at all levels of the ecosystem service hierarchy: as a regulator of underpinning ecosystem processes, as a final ecosystem service and as a good that is subject to valuation, whether economic or otherwise. Ecosystem science and practice has not yet absorbed the lessons of this complex relationship, which suggests an urgent need to develop the interdisciplinary science of ecosystem management bringing together ecologists, conservation biologists, resource economists and others.

Section snippets

Biodiversity in ecosystem assessment

Interest in ecosystem assessments (see Glossary) has been growing from both scientific and policy perspectives. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) [1] clarified the many kinds of benefit that humans derive from ecosystems, and promoted the term ‘ecosystem services’ to describe them. At a global level, the MA documented that over 60% of ecosystem services were deteriorating or already overused [1]. Recent emphasis has been towards regional and national ecosystem assessments, developing

What is biodiversity?

There are many definitions and even more measures of biodiversity. To many people, species are the fundamental unit of biodiversity, and the number of species (i.e. species richness) is the iconic measure. Species richness can be expressed in various ways to reflect relative abundance or the ecological or evolutionary relations among species 5, 6. However, for conservation and management, a more nuanced definition, reflecting variation at the genetic and ecosystem level, as well as one that

How does biodiversity fit into the concept of ecosystem services?

The preceding sections have demonstrated that both biodiversity and ecosystem services are complex concepts. This complexity may go some way to explaining the many ways that biodiversity has been represented in ecosystem assessments. Equating biodiversity with ecosystem services implies that managing one will automatically enhance the other [15]. Alternatively, regarding biodiversity itself as an ecosystem service reflects an intrinsic value for biodiversity, whereby organisms have value that

Biodiversity and ecosystem science

Biodiversity and ecosystem science already implicitly recognises the various roles of biodiversity in the ecosystem services hierarchy (Figure 1). Conservation biologists have used a range of approaches to develop the evidence base to support species conservation, which is aimed at protecting biodiversity as a ‘good’ that has a direct (conservation) value. Community ecologists have focused on the role of biodiversity in ecosystem processes (e.g. primary productivity) and ecosystem services

Concluding remarks

‘Biodiversity’ is a term that has suffered from a plethora of definitions. Given that it is a complex phenomenon, we recommend accepting and using the broad inclusive definition from the CBD, which makes it straightforward to recognise the complexity of biodiversity and then to consider the ways that it is involved in ecosystem services.

Biodiversity has multiple roles in the delivery of ecosystem services, as a regulator of ecosystem processes, as a service in itself and as a good. Effective

Acknowledgements

We thank our colleagues in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment, especially Ian Bateman, for much helpful discussion. We also acknowledge the insightful comments and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers and Dr Paul Craze.

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