Ecosystem Services Provided (PD8494)

This metric is intended to capture the ecosystem services provided by land or marine area the organization directly or indirectly controls. Note that what is most critical for organizations to capture is not necessarily the long list of ecosystem services provided, but rather the key ecosystem services and their quality. Organizations may choose to identify the top 3-5 ecosystem services provided from this list, then track their changes in quality over time.

The number, variety, and balance of ecosystem services is a good indicator of ecosystem health. A disproportionate share of human-induced provisioning services like crops and timber generally indicates poor ecosystem health (e.g., intensive agriculture, intensive forestry). The value of ecosystem services can be expressed in physical (e.g., amount of groundwater supplied in m³) or monetary terms. Monetary valuation of ecosystem services is complex and requires expert support but enables comparison and aggregation. Assessing ecosystem services at the site or project level uses specific tools such as InVEST or Aries and generally requires expert advice.

The societal value of ecosystems is deeply related to the benefits they provide people, specifically ecosystem services, making this metric a proxy for the social value of biodiversity. Organizations are encouraged to report this metric alongside others in the Biodiversity IRIS+ Core Metrics Set, as tailored to context, that give a complementary, more complete picture of biodiversity performance.

Examples of details to footnote include how the ecosystem provides the selected ecosystem services, the methodology used to measure and value the ecosystem services, information on which services were covered, and any external validation or verification conducted to evaluate the provision of the selected ecosystem services. For external validation or verification, organizations should footnote which services were covered, the date of evaluation, and the entity conducting verification/validation (e.g., university researcher, consultant, ecosystem services bank).

Organizations can apply this metric in risk screening (‘which ecosystem services are at risk due to the investment?’), identifying restoration opportunities (‘which ecosystem services can benefit from an investment in restoration?’), and comparison (‘which product innovations or locations for restoration are most promising in terms of generating ecosystem services?’).

Organizations are encouraged to report this metric in conjunction with Protected Land Area: Total (PI4716), Protected Land Area: Permanent (PI3924), Land Directly Controlled: Sustainably Managed (OI6912), Land Indirectly Controlled: Sustainably Managed (PI6796), Land Directly Controlled: Total (OI5408), and Land Indirectly Controlled: Total (PI3789).

The detailed options for this metric were sourced from the World Resources Institute (WRI).