Ecosystem Services and Their Economic Valuation

Ecosystem services are the conditions and processing through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life. They not only supply to human with the production of ecosystem goods, such as food, forage, timber, biomass fuels, natural fiber, and pharmaceuticals. Ecosystems also perform fundamental life support services, which include the purification of air and water, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, regulation of climate, regeneration of soil fertility, and production and maintenance of biodiversity, mitigation of floods, droughts, the erosive forces of wind and rain. Today, escalating impacts of human activities on forests, wetlands, and other natural ecosystems imperil the delivery of such services. Now it is recognized that ecosystem services are essential to civilization and the core issue for sustainable development. In this paper, the advances in ecosystem services characteristics, their economic valuation and their relations to sustainable development are literaturally surveyed and discussed.