What is the Economic Cost of the Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services?
Not all values of biodiversity can be measured in economic terms. To many people nature has an intrinsic value that is unrelated to its usefulness to humans. Besides, only part of the full range of benefits provided by biodiversity and ecosystems can be assessed due to current limitations in our understanding of ecological functions and in economic tools. Value estimates from case studies usually take into account only some of the benefits. Also data and valuation studies are not yet available for all types of ecosystems – for example marine ecosystems are less well covered than terrestrial ecosystems. Therefore, it should be kept in mind that estimates of the economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem services are surrounded by many uncertainties and that they provide only lower bounds. However, economic valuation is a fruitful approach to measure the contribution of biodiversity and ecosystem services to the quality of human life and better understand trade-offs between different p
