|Deforested land in the DR|
The benefits of forests described above are all examples of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are defined as any positive benefit that ecosystems provide to people. The UN sponsored Millennium Ecosystem Assessment recently identified the major categories of ecosystem services: Provisioning (providing material or energy outputs), Regulating (moderating natural phenomena), Supporting (maintaining habitats and biodiversity), or Cultural (relating to tourism, aesthetics, and recreation). The ecosystem services forests provide fall under
|Forested land in the DR|
For economists, the answer is simple: give landowners economic incentives to conserve forests and/or to cut them down only at sustainable rates. To do this, economists start by estimating the monetary value of the ecosystem services the forests provide. Attaching monetary value to ecosystem services allows economists to determine the optimal amount governments would have to pay land owners in exchange for a promise to conserve their land for a certain period of time. The optimal amount has to be equal or greater to the potential income a landowner could gain by using the land immediately for other purposes, otherwise, there would still be no economic incentive to conserve the land. Payment for ecosystem services (PES) creates a market for conservation. Without PES, ecosystem services are on their own socially and environmentally valuable. With PES, ecosystem services become economically valuable, too.
|F2F Volunteers Glen Juergens, Bill Ryburn,|
and Dave Lombardo with field staff and hosts in the DR
Ecosystem services can be small, large, direct, or indirect; they can be provisioning, regulating, supporting, or cultural. But they can’t be fully recreated by humans. Therefore, conserving ecosystems is essential if we want to continue benefiting from their services, and PES is one viable way to encourage conservation around the world.