Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems

Abstract

Review: Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems By Gretchen C. Daily Reviewed by Sean T. O'Brien Florida Department of Environmental Protection Daily, Gretchen C. Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997. 392 p. US$24.95 paper ISBN: 1-55963-475-8. Recycled, acid-free paper. Recently, I commented on the response made by the New Jersey chapter of a national conservation group to a state forestry plan. Fortunately, I had just finished reading Nature's Services and had a broadened understanding of the value of natural ecosystems to our state, and human society in general. Edited by Gretchen Daily, the Bing Interdisciplinary Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, Nature's Services includes 20 chapters by well-known scientists on a range of topics organized around the theme of the value of services provided by natural ecosystems to humanity. Understandably, and usefully, contributors to Nature's Services make economic arguments for conservation and tend to downplay moral and aesthetic arguments. In general, the value of ecosystems can be divided into consumptive and nonconsumptive uses. For example, consumptive uses for forests include logging and hunting; nonconsumptive uses include bird watching, appreciation of the existence of an ecosystem, flood control, and soil conservation. While consumptive uses can be valued directly based on market prices, it is harder to assign value to nonconsumptive uses. It is difficult to present nonconsumptive uses objectively in arguments about conservation of ecosystems. It is this difficulty that led to the contributors' lament [of] the near total lack of public appreciation of societal dependence upon natural ecosystems (p. xv). Given this, I was surprised that Nature's Services misses the mark, though not too widely, in its self-stated goal ...to characterize the ways in which earth's natural ecosystems confer benefits on humanity, to make a preliminary assessment of their value, and to report this in a manner widely accessible to an educated audience (p. 2) Although the first two goals are admirably addressed, they are