Research on the economic valuation of ecosystem services
Manmade climate change and large-scale alteration of the landscape are affecting the planet and the ecosystem services upon which humans depend. These alterations include loss of forests that were once large carbon sinks, loss of pollination services provided by bees, loss of ecosystem resilience in the face of natural disasters, and many others. While ecologists and policy makers discuss the details of these effects, many have argued that economic incentives provide the strongest impetus for conservation goals. Yet, among ecologists, this approach to valuation of ecosystem services is particularly controversial. Furthermore, the benefits of this approach are as of yet, largely unproven. Research in the past several years in PLoS One and PLoS Biology has highlighted some of the successes and difficulties with this so-called economic valuation of ecosystem services. These difficulties fall into at least four categories: (1) the difficulty of discretely quantifying continuous variation...