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The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has rapidly become an important approach to understanding and prioritizing the natural world in environmental policy and decision-making, described in the broadest definition as the “benefits people obtain from ecosystems”. The need to identify, classify, value and preserve ES is now a major driver and organizing principle of numerous environmental policies, including payments for environmental services (PES), biodiversity and carbon offsetting, natural capital accounting, and other approaches. Yet despite the growing attention to ES over the past 25 years, there remain serious challenges, both regarding the normative values of the concept itself, and in operationalizing it and translating it to policy-making. As ES concepts become more widespread in environmental discourse and practice there is a strong need to understand and explain the underlying assumptions in how nature’s benefits to humans are defined, measured, and valued. Overall, this project will explore the ways different potential ES (such as carbon sequestration, water quality regulation, or biological pest control, among others) have been defined and measured in Southeast Asian national and local policies and projects; evaluate how valuation and marketization of different ES has progressed in Asia, and the causes for this; and finally, assess the role of participation in policymaking to determine if ES concepts are inclusive or exclusive of multiple stakeholders.
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