Ecosystem Services- My Final Essay

Mainstreaming good sense, integrated use of ecosystems instead of simply trashing them with development in the style of Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” should be the social norm. It is surprising that so many don’t understand the concept of the value of the ecosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2595abcvh2M

I should mention that ecosystem services is one approach, and probably is a useful paradigm for governments and political leaders to add as a consideration before development, yet it is likely to be one tool in an arsenal to keep the ecosphere as healthy and intact as possible.

1) Peru’s use of ecospheric services presented by the nature conservancy working in Peru has established the aquafondo project to develop a sustainable watershed for the city of Lima. I believe that proves up the idea of ecosystem services reaching toward the edges of the mainstream of government planning if not actually the norm for most of the world yet.

TNC’s science policy case study was named ‘Achievements and Challenges in Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Policy Decisions’. Luis Alberto Gonzales, TNC’s country rep in Peru explained that he could go to Ministry’s of Economics and Finance and address issues of interest to each with ideas in the language they would work in usually. An interdisciplinary approach that is of practical value to governments providing services and security while reducing adverse impact to the ecosphere can be structured with positive monetary and other values in mind.

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/aquafondo-the-water-fund-for-lima/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-oceans/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-infrastructure/

2) Another tool to add exploits the desire of profit. Making a profit is basic for so many that it is practical to design buildings that have no net loss of ecosphere. Artificial mountain ranges that are inside community structures of many stories actually add more land surface area to a flat surface for example. If the exteriors are terraced for growing or wildlife habitat some expansion of the ecosphere in area could occur. If you build it they will come.

Perhaps being more to the point in summarizing ecosystem services technically and having something to present that is persuasive to various government or private players with limited time or knowledge, and finding and showing the role ecosystem services approaches have as a tool or arrow in the quiver of arrows made to keep the ecosphere of the Earth healthy would be a good plan. Some will dismiss the idea of environmentalism outright and others may be put off by ecosystem services as being incapable of saving the ecosphere from gross degradation by development. In a way humanity is like locusts chasing after the green fields of profit eating everything before them. Awareness of humanity chasing the profit motive with the underlying need to consume and input energy because they are embedded in a thermodynamic process of the Universe that may be the penalty for original sin might produce innovations of better ways to secure energy for the masses (including food energy). At least synergy with mass food-energy producing systems and wild nature could develop beneficial to the prospects of humanity and the entire ecosphere.