Thoughts of a travelling ecologist 9.What money cannot buy-monetarising ecosystem services

A few years before the millennium,due to a desire to make the occasion significant,there was a flurry of activities.Various summaries and initiatives were born,mostly of transient importance,and more than one of these aresimply marks of hubris.Ecologists were not exempt from this spirit of the times-but they were successful in making an impact.A group of American ecologists initiated the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment(MEA,2005),a global exercise。

A few years before the millennium,due to a desire to make the occasion significant,there was a flurry of activities.Various summaries and initiatives were born,mostly of transient importance,and more than one of these aresimply marks of hubris.Ecologists were not exempt from this spirit of the times-but they were successful in making an impact.A group of American ecologists initiated the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment（MEA,2005）,a global exercise,to calculate the financial value of ESs globally, and came to the amount of 33 trillion US dollars/year, which is about double of the then-total global,GDP. The juggernaut of monetarising ESs has started.