Balancing the approaches of environmental conservation by considering ecosystem services as well as biodiversity

In recent years, most plans for conservation have focused on biodiversity, ignoring the importance of the ecosystem services. This paper discusses limitations of the biodiversity-centred approach to conservation and reasons why ecosystem services need to be included to provide a balanced approach to conservation. To achieve this objective, there is need to improve the identification and valuation of ecosystem services. By focusing on biodiversity conservation, we may ignore many areas that are not rich in biodiversity but are important to human welfare and are under the threat of environmental degradation.