Background:

Marine and terrestrial ecosystem services are essential for life and sustainable development in the world. They need to be identified, known and valued in order to be used rationally, responsibly and in solidarity from an intergenerational perspective.

Maintaining air and soil quality, flood and disease control and crop pollination are some of the “regulating services” provided by terrestrial ecosystems. The oceans, meanwhile, are providers of essential ecosystem services associated with climate regulation, oxygen production and CO2 absorption.

However, these ecosystem services, usually invisible, are under anthropogenic threat, compromising our very survival. The protection and conservation of biodiversity requires concrete measures aimed at conserving marine and terrestrial ecosystem services, including:

1. Assessing and valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity. The first step in protecting biodiversity and the ecosystems linked to the natural resources on which a country or community depends is to know and understand the role they play.
2. Improve tools for managing ecosystem services and biodiversity.
3. Promote an institutional framework that places the sustainable use of ecosystem services and biodiversity, at the heart of decision making.
4. Value marine and terrestrial ecosystem services in order to generate incentives to care for them. It is necessary to move towards a multidisciplinary approach that understands the fight against climate change from an integral perspective and seeks to conserve these ecosystem services from an environmental, social, economic and cultural dimension.