EPHM7110 Chap.4 Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital
Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital
Four families, and a checklist that makes omissions visible
An ecosystem service is a benefit a person receives from a working system, and the course groups them into four families. Provisioning services are the things the system produces that people take out of it: food, fuel, medicine, clothes and water.
Regulating services hold conditions inside a workable range, covering waste broken down, water and air cleaned, pests and disease held in check, and climate held steady. Cultural services are the non material benefits, cultural, spiritual, recreational and educational.
Supporting services are necessary for the production of the other three and are defined as indirect and occurring over a long time, covering water and nutrients kept in circulation, soil built, habitat supplied and genetic variety maintained.
The specific value of holding all four in your head is that it makes the missing ones visible in someone else's argument.
Biomimicry sits in an unusual position
The course names biomimicry, design inspiration drawn from nature, alongside the provisioning family. It is the clearest case of a benefit that survives the loss of an individual organism but not the loss of a species.
A harvested fish is consumed once; a structural principle read off a leaf can be used indefinitely and disappears permanently when the species does.
That asymmetry is the strongest practical argument in the course for conserving species with no current economic use.
Natural capital, cut two different ways
Natural capital is the stock of natural resources and of working natural processes that keeps people and other living things alive and holds up economies.
Natural resources are Substances or energy occurring in nature that people need or can put to use; natural services are Workings of nature that keep life going and hold up economies. A second and independent cut runs across that one.
Renewable resources are continually produced and are not finite, but going on using them normally depends on people planning and managing them properly, and improper use results in impairment or exhaustion and the social and economic damage that follows. Non renewable resources are finite and cannot be replenished once destroyed or consumed.
Renewable therefore describes the mechanism of replacement rather than guaranteeing the outcome, and the qualification is written into the definition itself.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services
- 02
Directness and speed as the two properties that decide what gets priced
- 03
Why supporting services are missed systematically rather than by accident
- 04
Biomimicry as a benefit that outlives the individual but not the species
- 05
Natural capital as natural resources plus natural services
- 06
The renewable and non renewable cut, and why it runs across the first one
- 07
Groundwater and surface water on the non renewable side, and the reason
Find the three service families a valuation has left out
- 2Say which family the two counted items belong to.
- 3Name the three families not counted, with an example of each at this site.
- 2State the conclusion the omission supports, and the one it does not.
Key terms
- Ecosystem Service
- A benefit a person receives from a working ecosystem.
- Provisioning Services
- The goods a system produces that people take out of it, such as food, fuel, medicine, clothes and water.
- Regulating Services
- Processes that hold conditions inside a workable range, including climate regulation, waste decomposition and purification.
- Supporting Services
- Services necessary for the production of the other three families, described as indirect and occurring over a long time.
- Natural Capital
- The whole stock of natural resources together with the working natural processes that keep people and other life alive and hold up economies.
- Natural Services
- Workings of nature that keep life going and hold up economies.
- Renewable Resource
- A resource that is continually produced and not finite, whose continued use depends on proper planning and management.
Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital FAQ
Why does a market valuation miss the same family every time?
Because the two things that make a benefit easy to price are the two things that family lacks. A price forms where someone receives something directly and soon enough to notice. Soil formation, nutrient cycling and habitat provision are described as indirect and slow by definition, so nobody is ever in a position to pay for one of them separately.
The omission is structural, which is also why pointing it out is a stronger criticism than accusing the analyst of bias.
Is a fishery safer than a coal seam because one of them regrows?
Only in the sense that rebuilding is possible at all. The wording the course uses makes the guarantee conditional: continued harvest usually depends on proper planning and management, and improper use ends in impairment or exhaustion. So the difference between the two is what can happen after collapse, not whether collapse can happen.
Treating the label as a safety rating is how stocks get fished down while everyone agrees the resource is in principle replaceable.
Why is groundwater grouped with the finite resources?
Because the classification turns on rate rather than on substance. Rain does fall every year, but an underground store filled over centuries is not being replenished on the timescale at which pumps are emptying it. It would belong on the other side only if withdrawal were held at or below the recharge rate, which is precisely the planning and management condition attached to the other category's own definition.
Exam move
Take a site you know and write one concrete example under each of the four families, then cross out the ones that have a price attached to them anywhere. What survives the crossing out is the part of your case that no economic appraisal will make for you, and it is the part your presentation has to argue.
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