Recently I finished conducting Ecosystem Service Assessment in accordance with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report views the natural systems as a life sustaining system to humankind providing essential ecosystem services (Ecosystem and Human Well-being – A Framework for Assessment). The benefits that humanity derives from the natural resources and processes are termed as ‘Ecosystem Services’.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment classifies the ecosystem services into four categories:
- provisioning – includes products directly obtained from the ecosystems such as food, water, minerals etc;
- regulating – includes benefits obtained from regulation of ecosystem processes such as carbon sequestration, climate regulation etc;
- supporting – includes services necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services such as primary production, nutrient cycling etc; and
- cultural – includes intangible benefits obtained from the ecosystems such as spiritual inspiration, aesthetics, recreation etc.
The report concludes that human actions are having a major escalating impact on the biodiversity of the world’s ecosystem, reducing their resilience and biocapacity.
The following network analysis is based on the current services provided by the Chatham Green Project area before the woodland plantation. It identifies the current use of the project area space and the current services provided, outlining interrelationships among the services, their subsequent cumulative effects and subsequent benefits to the people. Based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Framework, it draws attention to the key supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural services.This assessment would help us identify the different sustainable strategies that need to be adopted.
In future, we plan to conduct another service assessment once the woodland. This, along with the MARISCO threat analysis results, will form the baseline for the economic evaluation of the services.
