Exploring Risks, Trade-offs & Market Failure in Ecosystem Services

This essay discusses the existing and emerging risks threatening the value of ecosystem services, focusing on the impact of global change and biodiversity loss on human well-being. It highlights that the increasing population and changing climatic conditions have degraded ecosystems, particularly in Australia. The essay emphasizes the importance of both marine and terrestrial ecosystems and argues against trading off marine ecosystem services, as both ecosystems are crucial for maintaining balance and supporting human needs. The destruction of marine ecosystems would lead to adverse effects on species, oxygen levels, food supply, and revenues, increasing dependence on other ecosystems and depleting natural resources. Desklib offers a platform to explore similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

The benefits which we obtain from the ecosystem is known as ecosystem services. The wellbeing of
humans depends upon the smooth and sustainable flow of these ecosystem services. The increasing
population with changes in climatic condition has degraded the ecosystem. Among other countries,
the Australian ecosystem is most vulnerable to changing climate.
Global change: Due to overuse and exploitation of the ecosystem services, the effect of climatic or
global change is rising with each passing day. The increasing population, their demands, burning of
coal, production of electricity, use of daily electric appliances etc are some of the main causes of
global warming. Also, burning of gasoline for transportation, burning of forest for wood, land etc are
the main contributors in methane, carbon dioxide emissions. These increases risk for global warming
which has several effects like increase in temperature of earth, melting of ice at earth poles, rise in
level of sea, higher temperatures, decline of many species, rise in precipitation etc. these changes in
climatic condition will increase the risk of natural disasters like floods, landslide droughts, storms
etc. These further give rise to more epidemic and pandemic diseases.
Biodiversity: The global or climate change further effects the life of species and plants. The
transformation of habitats or environmental area not only affects the vegetation but the animal life
associated to them. The species of particular region is forcefully brought to artificial environment
causes imbalance in ecosystem. Increasing population, pollution and overexploitation of resources
like fishing, hunting, harvesting etc. can lead to the extinction of many more species of biodiversity.
The threats to biodiversity does not seem to decrease with increasing industrialization, urbanization
of the world. Natural areas and the environment of both the species and plants are being affected
with all these activities which causes imbalances in the ecosystem (Bellard, 2014).
Human well being
The change in ecosystem affects all the factors of the human well being which includes living a
healthier life, maintaining social relation, security and freedom to make their own decisions
(Mooney, 2010). As human are directly or indirectly dependent upon the ecosystem services for
their needs and the impact on the ecosystem affects the well-being of human. Due to deterioration
of climatic conditions, environment the human health gets affected as well. The effects on human
physical and mental health has led to decrease in human life expectancy, phycological disorders etc.
2.
There cannot be a trade off between the ecosystem services with the marine ecosystem. This is
because all the needs of human cannot be fulfilled from marine or terrestrial ecosystem alone. The
marine ecosystem is one of the most abundant ecosystem existing on earth which is home to wide
array of species (Harris, 2017). The marine ecosystem is also of the major source of providing oxygen
to the environment.
Both the ecosystem should co-exist so that there is a balance in the ecosystem. The destruction in
marine ecosystem will adversely affect the specifies & plants, decrease in oxygen content in the
water, reduction in food, rapid land conversion rate, loss in revenues etc. these all factors will
increase the dependence over other ecosystem which will further lead to depletion of natural
resources (Hattam & Atkins, 2015). Hence, this will lead to an imbalance in the ecosystem affecting
all living organisms.

Bibliography
Bellard, 2014. Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity. NCBI, pp. 365-377.
Harris, A., 2017. Marine Ecosystem Classification. [Online]
Available at: https://sciencing.com/marine-ecosystem-classification-38170.html
[Accessed 27 March 2018].
Hattam, C. & Atkins, J., 2015. Marine ecosystem services: Linking indicators to their classification.
Ecological Indicators, pp. 61-75.
Mooney, 2010. The ecosystem-service chain and the biological diversity crisis. NCBI, Volume
365(1537), p. 331–39.