Dossier

Ecosystem services

Ecosystems provide services to humankind. Those may involve the provision of a product (e.g. drinking water), a regulatory authority (e.g, pollination of crops), a cultural service (e.g, providing opportunities for recreation), or a service that supports the services mentioned earlier (e.g the cycle of nutrients in an ecosystem). This dossier contains news, background information and research results relating to ecosystem services.

News about ecosystem services

• 

  Nature’s decline ‘unprecedented’ in human history: 1 million species threatened with extinction

  07 May 2019 - category_news - The current global efforts are insufficient to stop the unprecedented decline of nature: drastic societal changes are necessary to stop the loss of biodiversity and restore nature. This is the conclusion the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The assessment analyzes the causes for the loss of biodiversity, the implications for people worldwide, and options for bending the curve of the loss of biodiversity. The Global Assessment was prepared by 150 leading international experts from 50 countries, among them are two Dutch experts from Wageningen University & Research.

News 2016 - 2017

News 2014 - 2015

News 2012 - 2013

Research on ecosystem services

• 

  INTERCEDE (Incentivising future forest ecosystem services and incomes in Europe)

  21 March 2024 - Project - INTERCEDE aims to enhance the value of Europe’s forests by identifying and upscaling market-based instruments, developing policy frameworks and guidelines, and reducing the gap between high-level research, policy and practice.
• 

  FutureMARES

  01 January 2023 - Project - Marine ecosystems provide fundamental climate regulation, food and cultural services. FutureMARES focuses on socially responsible and economically viable actions, strategies and nature-based solutions to safeguard these ecosystem services.
• 

  R-LINK

  09 March 2021 - Project - Small-scale and bottom-up initiatives, and incremental urban development dominate various political agendas. These initiatives, termed Community-Linked Incremental Urban Developments (CLIUDs) here, remain underexplored.
• 

  Effects of organic farming on private and public ecosystem services and grassland multifunctionality (ServiceGrass)

  30 January 2020 - Project - ServiceGrass is a project coordinated by Dr. Valentin Klaus, from USYS (Grassland Group), ETH Zurich. Partners from ETH, Agroscope, University of Bern collaborate to study the effects of organic farming on private and public ecosystem services and grassland multifunctionality, in a Swiss canton.
• 

  Energy gardens in the Netherlands: sustainable energy production, nature, landscape, recreation and education

  19 December 2019 - Project - Sustainable energy production can be a valuable addition to landscapes and nature, as the Dutch Nature and Environment Federations (Natuur en Milieufederaties) and Wageningen University & Research aim to show with the Energy Garden project. In these energy gardens, large-scale renewable energy production will go hand-in-hand with nature development, recreation and education. This approach makes it possible to address multiple interests while working towards the National climate goals (Nationale Klimaatakkoord, 2019).
• 

  Understanding restored forests for benefiting people and nature in the Atlantic Forest

  05 December 2019 - Project - Large-scale forest and landscape restoration in the Atlantic Forest region of Brazil needs novel upscaling from thousands to millions of hectares. The NewFor project is part of NWO-FAPESP a large collaboration between Dutch and Brazilian partners that are investigating how to achieve this.
• 

  A tropical mosaic of land-uses for ecosystem services

  16 June 2017 - Project - In Latin America, cattle ranching is often practiced in tropical areas rich in cultural and biological diversity, creating a dynamic mosaic of forest patches and agricultural fields intermixed throughout the landscape.

Related dossiers

• 

  Climate and forests

  05 November 2015 - Dossier - There are more than 3 trillion trees on earth, that means there are about 422 trees per person. However, the total number of trees has almost been halved since the start of human civilization. Ecosystems with a long lifespan, like forests, are more vulnerable to the relatively quick changes of climate change.