New Formula for Ecosystem ’Services’

Photo: UHH/R.Hansen Moritz Drupp - Governments the world over are looking for novel approaches to evaluating ecosystem benefits and value. This is to illustrate the impacts of environmental destruction for political decision-making. Originally acting at the behest of the government of the United Kingdom, an international research team, headed by Prof. Moritz Drupp from Universität Hamburg, just suggested a new calculation approach. This will be presented in the journal Science. Across the world, animal and plant species and their habitats are wiped out at breathtaking speed. And so are the -services- they provide, including the filtering of air and water, the pollination of crops, the recreational value for humans, or the existence value of organisms. To better illustrate these ecosystem services in costbenefit analyses, countries have given partial monetary value to ecosystem services.