生态系统服务功能、生态价值与可持续发展

Ecosystem Services and Their Economic Valuation

生态系统服务功能是指生态系统与生态过程所形成及所维持的人类赖以生存的自然环境条件与效用。它不仅为人类提供了食品、医药及其它生产生活原料 ,更重要的是维持了人类赖以生存的生命支持系统 ,维持生命物质的生物地化循环与水文循环 ,维持生物物种与遗传多样性 ,净化环境 ,维持大气化学的平衡与稳定。人们逐步认识到 ,生态服务功能是人类生存与现代文明的基础。近年来生态系统服务功能的研究已了人们的广泛重视 ,生态学家、经济学家纷纷探讨生态系统服务功能的内涵与定量评价方法 ,并已成为当前生态与生态经济学研究的前沿课题。本文拟系统地分析生态系统服务功能的研究进展与趋势 ,生态系统服务功能价值的评佑方法 。

Ecosystem services are the conditions and processing through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life. They not only supply to human with the production of ecosystem goods, such as food, forage, timber, biomass fuels, natural fiber, and pharmaceuticals. Ecosystems also perform fundamental life support services, which include the purification of air and water, detoxification and decomposition of wastes, regulation of climate, regeneration of soil fertility, and production and maintenance of biodiversity, mitigation of floods, droughts, the erosive forces of wind and rain. Today, escalating impacts of human activities on forests, wetlands, and other natural ecosystems imperil the delivery of such services. Now it is recognized that ecosystem services are essential to civilization and the core issue for sustainable development. In this paper, the advances in ecosystem services characteristics, their economic valuation and their relations to sustainable development are literaturally surveyed and discussed.