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Ecosystem services

Nature's gift

The progress and survival of any society depends on nature and its valuable resources. The environment and its ecosystems contribute to the development of communities from the health, well-being, and economic point of view. How? By providing the necessary resources for human life, supplying us with raw materials or offering us cultural or leisure resources.

According to the definition used by the UN in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecosystem services are all those benefits that ecosystems provide to human beings to enable them to fulfill themselves in all aspects, and they can be obtained in the form of goods, services, or values. The preservation of ecosystem services is a priority on which human life depends.

In a world threatened by the effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity, knowing in depth what ecosystem services are, what practical examples we find, or what benefits they provide can help us to give them their true value and work on their care and preservation.

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What are ecosystem services?

Ecosystem services, also known as environmental services, are all those benefits that an ecosystem provides to society, and which influence the health, quality of life, and economic development of the people who make it up.

But in order to better understand what an ecosystem service is and what benefits it provides, it is essential to start by defining first two other fundamental and closely related concepts: ecosystem and natural capital.

An ecosystem is an ecological system that is made up of different living elements that interact with each other, with their environment, and with their non-living environment. While natural capital refers to the set of renewable and non-renewable resources of an ecosystem.

In the functioning of any ecosystem, the biodiversity of its living organisms is essential, in other words, the variety of living beings that inhabit it in harmony and balance. Changes in the biodiversity of an ecosystem can directly affect the provision of ecosystem services, which is why we must also be concerned and take care of its management and preservation in a sustainable manner, something we always keep in mind in our policies and our sustainability model at Repsol.

The 4 types of ecosystem services

According to the benefit or use they offer to the society to which they belong, the ecosystem services that exist around the world can be divided into four different types.

A natural waterfall

  • Provisioning services
One of the main types of ecosystem services has to do with material benefits or products from nature that human beings can obtain from the ecosystems that surround them for consumption or use such as freshwater, food, wood, natural fibers, or renewable fuels, among others.
 
  • Supporting services

Supporting services are those that help the production of the rest of environmental services. Pollination, conservation of natural habitats for different species, water cycle, or soil erosion control are examples of these services that help regulate ecosystems.

A bee pollinating a flower

  • Regulating services

An ecosystem regulating service is understood as the ecological processes that improve or make life possible such as climate regulation, air quality or water cycle quality, pollination, or control of floods, soil erosion, and diseases.

  • Cultural services

Among the benefits that we can obtain from ecosystem services are also non-material benefits, more related to spiritual well-being or enrichment, since nature also contributes to the construction of cultural identity, as a source of artistic inspiration or engineering works, for aesthetic enjoyment, or as a space for recreation.

Some environmental services, such as provisioning, are easier to quantify than others, to which it is more complicated to apply a concrete value.

Examples of environmental services

Once the different types of environmental services have been described in detail, it is also useful to examine them more in depth by breaking down some examples, especially those related to regulation, since their effect is often invisible, and we focus on them when they have been altered or deteriorated:

  1. Bioremediation. It is a method by which different living beings (microbes) are used for the recovery of natural resources or ecosystems (groundwater or soils, for example) that have been contaminated. By stimulating the growth of these microscopic organisms that live in the environment, the aim is to degrade certain compounds (petroleum and derivatives, solvents, pesticides, etc.), since the microbes use the contaminants as a source of food and energy.

  2. CO2 sinks. Another important environmental regulation service is CO2 absorption by CO2 sinks, such as forests, which through photosynthesis remove this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and return oxygen to the atmosphere. In this field, it is interesting to discover the Repsol Foundation's Green Engine Marketplace project, a digital tool for people and companies that wish to calculate and, in turn, mitigate the carbon footprint of their activities.

  3. Pollination. Bees, but also other insects, some birds, and bats, are the main pollinating agents within an ecosystem, a process that is essential for seed dispersal and the development of crop fruits. According to data from the FAO, almost 90% of plants with flowers depend on pollinators for their reproduction. Also 75% of crops, which, thanks to the work of pollinators, see their flowers turn into fruit. Food production and food security, as well as biodiversity, depend to a large extent on this environmental service.
Ecosystem services infographic

How to care for the environment

Saving water, unplugging the devices you are not using, and recycling are some examples that will help us to have a more responsible and eco-friendly way of life.

All about how to care for the environment