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Conservation Biology Research
Ecosystem Services
What goods and services do natural ecosystems provide to human society (e.g., water purification, food)? What is the economic value of these services? How can these values be captured to promote conservation?
Addressing these questions can illuminate how human societies depend on ecosystems, and can help WWF link biodiversity with human well-being to build broader support for conservation. Ecosystem services are worth trillions of dollars per year, but harnessing their value for conservation will require a better understanding of how, and over what scales, these services are provided.
Sample projects:
- Pollination services from tropical forests to surrounding coffee farms
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Pollination services from tropical forests to surrounding coffee farms
Economic Value of Tropical Forest to Coffee Production (PDF, 139k)
Abstract: Can economic forces be harnessed for biodiversity conservation? The answer hinges on characterizing the value of nature, a tricky business from biophysical, socioeconomic, and ethical perspectives. While the societal benefits of native ecosystems are clearly immense, they remain largely unquantified for all but a few services. Here, we estimate the value of tropical forest in supplying pollination services to agriculture. We focus on coffee because it is one of the world's most valuable export commodities and is grown in many of the world's most biodiverse regions. Using pollination experiments along replicated distance gradients, we found that forest-based pollinators increased coffee yields by 20 percent within ~1 km of forest. Pollination also improved coffee quality near forest by reducing the frequency of "peaberries" (i.e, small misshapen seeds) by 27 percent. During 2000-2003, pollination services from two forest fragments (46 and 111 ha) translated into ca. US$60,000/yr for one Costa Rican farm. This value is commensurate with expected revenues from competing land uses and far exceeds current conservation incentive payments. Conservation investments in human-dominated landscapes can therefore yield double benefits: for biodiversity and agriculture.
- Ricketts, T.H., G.C. Daily, P.R. Ehrlich, and C. Michener (2004). Economic value of tropical forest to coffee production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - US. 101(34):12579-12582.
- Ricketts, T.H. (2004). Do tropical forest fragments enhance pollinator activity in nearby coffee crops? Conservation Biology
18(5):1262-1271.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is an international effort to assess the services that global ecosystems provide to human societies, the ways in which these services affect human well-being, and the various options for improving ecosystem management to improve well-being and alleviate poverty. The MA was launched by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001 and it will help to meet assessment needs of the relevant U.N. Conventions as well as other users in the private sector and civil society.
Several Conservation Science Program staff (e.g., Tom Allnutt, Colby Loucks, Taylor Ricketts) are involved as Lead Authors or Coordinating Lead Authors in the MA, helping to design the Assessment's overall approach and bringing datasets and expertise to the "Conditions and Trends" working group. For more information on this unique effort, see the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Web site.
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