Limitations of the ecosystem services versus disservices dichotomy

Abstract

Ongoing debate over the ecosystem services (ES) concept highlights a range of contrasting views and misconceptions. Schröter et al. (2014) summarize seven recurring arguments against the ES concept, which broadly relate to ethical concerns, translation across the science-policy interface, and how the concept's normative aims and optimistic assumptions affect ES as a scientific approach. In particular, recent criticism has focused on how the concept is unable to address ecological complexity due to the limitations of the economic stock-flow model that ES is based on (Norgaard 2010). Acknowledging ecosystem disservices (EDS) (i.e., outcomes of ecosystem functions that negatively affect human communities) has been suggested as a way to account for this ecological complexity (McCauley 2006; Lyytimäki 2015).