Ecosystem Services in the Service-Dominant Logic Framework

Abstract

The ecosystem services concept has become the predominant lens through which researchers and decision-makers view the relationship between natural ecosystems and human well-being. Over the past decades, a number of widely accepted classification systems, analytical methods, and a rich vocabulary around ecosystem services have evolved in the literature. Although there is widespread recognition that many ecosystem services are not exchanged in markets as commodities, many of these ecosystem service concepts and tools were built upon a theoretical foundation derived from neoclassical economics in which ecosystems are seen as passive production systems. Unfortunately, this perspective carries the potential to blind one to the complex interactions by which ecosystems, beneficiaries, and myriad other social actors interact to manage ecosystems and create human value. The service-dominant logic (S-D logic) framework, which views all value as being co-created by multiple actors engaged in the exchange of service, offers a valuable perspective by which the ecosystem services concept may be recast. Similarly, the ecosystem services lexicon can make important contributions to S-D logic by providing a means to describe and quantify the universal importance of natural ecosystems to human service systems. In this chapter, we briefly describe the ecosystem service concept and introduce the means for incorporating ecosystem services (as potential service offerings) into the S-D logic framework. We then use this modified framework to explore two case studies, recreation on U.S. family forests and a biodiversity market in Finland.