Wetlands Ecosystems

Brief Literature Review on Wetlands Ecosystem Services

1.1 Introduction

Human beings derived a range of services that are fundamental to their well-being, health, livelihoods, and survival from ecosystems (Costanza et al., 1997, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), 2005, TEEB Foundations, 2010 and TEEB Synthesis, 2010). According to Daily (1997), the ecosystems and the biological diversity contained within them provided stream of goods and services, the sustained supply of which remains essential to the global economic development and other aspects of social welfare. Broadly speaking, ecosystem services refer to the variety of conditions and processes through which the natural systems and the types that they contain help continue and fulfil human life.

Vihervaara et al. (2010) and Barnaud et al. (2011) argued that the concept of the services provided to humanity by ecosystems was developed at the end of the 1970. However, it was after its institutionalization in the 1992 Rio “Earth Summit”, that the idea has been disseminated throughout science, experts and public debate. This has played a pivotal role for the foundation of the preservation of biological diversity and protection of the environment in international law. In addition, in 1996, the United Nations announced international initiatives concerning ecosystem approaches in the framework of implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity. However, the use of this approach has become operational only from 2004 in the framework of UN programme led by a group of international scientific experts, designed to better identify and evaluate the significance of ecosystems too human-welfare (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, Chap.1, p.27). The MEA report approved a definition which had already been proposed by Daily et al. (1997): “Ecosystem Services are the benefits people obtained from Ecosystems”. A number of scientific publications focused on this scheme appeared in