6 / 112
6
SUMMARY
Biodiversity and ecosystems deliver crucial services to humankind – from food security
to keeping our waters clean, buffering against extreme weather, providing medicines to
recreation and adding to the foundation of human culture. Together these services have
been estimated to be worth over 21
–
72 trillion USD every year – comparable to the World
Gross National Income of 58 trillion USD in 2008.
Human society is however living well beyond the carrying capac-
ity of the planet and currently over 60% of ecosystem services and
their biodiversity are degrading, compromising sustainability,
well being, health and security. Environmental degradation is aug-
menting the impact of natural disasters such as floods, droughts
and flash floods affecting 270 million people annually and killing
some 124,000 people worldwide every year, 85% in Asia, and is,
in some cases, even a primary cause of disasters. Degrading and
polluted ecosystems are also a chief component in over 900 mil-
lion lacking access to safe water. Poor management of activities
on land and sea is further exacerbated by changing climatic condi-
tions. In some scenarios loss of ecosystem services are depicted
to result in up to 25% loss in the world’s food production by 2050
along with hunger and spread of poverty in many regions.
Restoring degraded ecosystems is a key challenge. Ecological
restoration is a critical component in the application of an eco-
system approach to management. It is the process of assisting
the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged,
or destroyed. It involves attempting to re-establish the ecosys-
tem itself as well as targeting restoration of its services, such as
clean water, to humankind.
Effective conservation is the cheapest and most optimal option
for securing services, costing only from tens to a few hundred
USD per hectare. However, protected areas cover only 13%, 6%
and <1% of the planets land, coastal, and ocean area, respective-
ly, and many are not under effective management. Of the re-
maining 80–90% of the planet, almost one-third of the world’s
ecosystems are already directly converted for human activities
such as for agriculture and cities, and another one-third have
been degraded to some extent. With such levels of degradation,
it is apparent that major improvements and efforts are needed
to restore and manage ecosystems also outside protected areas
at a much greater scale than today. Indeed, restoration costs
range from hundreds to thousands, or even hundreds of thou-
sands of USD for every hectare restored, or over 10 fold that of
effectively managed protected areas. These numbers, however,
are dwarfed compared to the long-term estimated costs of loos-
ing these ecosystem services.
Well planned, appropriate restoration, compared to loss of eco-
system services, may provide benefit/cost ratios of 3–75 in re-
turn of investments and an internal rate of return of 7–79%,
depending on the ecosystem restored and its economic con-
text, thus providing in many cases some of the most profitable
public investments including generation of jobs directly and
indirectly related to an improved environment and health. Eco-
logical restoration can further act as an engine of economy and
a source of green employment.
A world wide survey of studies looking at restoration and con-
servation of ecosystem services shows us that conservation and
restoration provides a highly profitable, low-cost investment
for maintaining ecosystem services. Increases in biodiversity
and ecosystem service measures after restoration are positively
related. Restoration actions focused on enhancing biodiversity
should support increased provision of ecosystem services, par-
ticularly in tropical terrestrial biomes. Conversely, these results
suggest that ecosystem restoration focused mainly on improving
services should also have a primary aim at restoring biodiversity.
Challenges of waste water management in rural areas, which
produce over half of the organic contamination of waste wa-