Aldo Leopold: Early conservationist paves way to modern ecosystem services sustainability

If Aldo Leopold were alive today, he likely would be pleased. The father of wildlife management and the United States’ wilderness system likely would approve of the modern movement towards sustainable use of ecosystem services.[1]
In 1933, when Leopold wrote The Conservation Ethic, he was heralding a bold new thinking, calling for a “third” ethic whereby people considered land as more than mere property, thereby considering cause and effect in their interactions with nature. Civilization, he said, was “a state of mutual and interdependent cooperation between human animals, other animals, plants, and soils, which may be disrupted at any moment by the failure of any of them.” (Leopold, 1933, p. 183)
Indeed, 50 years after Leopold made these statements conservation has become a household term. With the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) initiated in 2001, conservation has now expanded around the globe. Today, we have a language to describe the many benefits we derive from nature, called ecosystems services, which helps us to consider the consequences of our actions in relation to these benefits. It might sound simple, but using a term such as “ecosystems services” has helped us to make progress towards beginning to control what Leopold said were “reactions resulting from the interplay of ecological and economic forces.”
Citing the story of the bluegrass, which was planted and flourished in the Mississippi valley, Leopold noted that people either tended to care for the land (enough to fight for it), when specific crops had economic gain, or their actions caused ruin, as in the story of “Moses’ land of milk and honey.” (Leopold, 1933, p. 183) Today, to encourage responsible use and management, conservationists, scientists and others, including the writers of the MA synthesis, have adopted terms such as “ecosystem services” to describe the benefits such as food, fuel, fiber, and timber that people obtain from nature.
The MA divides ecosystem services into four categories, (provisioning, regulating, cultural and support) (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.) such that we can begin to think more consciously about them in our everyday lives. As “consumers” we can easily relate to thinking about the various benefits we derive from nature as “services.” Thus, this language tool has made a dramatic difference in helping ordinary people grasp the consequences of the use and misuse of ecosystem resources. For example, by thinking of ecosystem services in the provisioning category, we can link benefits such as food, water, timber, and fiber to the specific ecosystems of forest, oceans, or grasslands. Regulating services are those ecosystem dynamics that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes, and water quality. Benefits such as recreational, aesthetic and spiritual are categorized as cultural ecosystem services. Soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling are support services. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v.)
Further, we can relate ecosystem services to what the MA calls “constituents of well-being,” such as “security, basic material for a good life, health, good social relations, and freedom of choice and action.” For example, provisioning services such as food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel have a direct impact on security, basic material for a good life, and health: a lack of food can lead to poor health, lack of timber may result in housing issues which reduce security, lack of fibers can result in lack of clothing or trade items, etc. To a lesser degree all of the ecosystem services affect at least four categories of the constituents of well-being. (MA Synthesis, 2005, v, vi)
As if echoing Leopold’s assertions about human impacts on the environment, the MA asserts that “people are integral parts of ecosystems and that a dynamic interaction exists between them and other parts of ecosystems, with the changing human condition driving, both directly and indirectly, changes in ecosystems and thereby causing changes in human well-being.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, v) According to the MA, indirect drivers of change, such as “demographic, economic, sociopolitical, science and technology and cultural and religious” drivers can have an impact on human well-being and poverty, while at the same time, influencing direct drivers of change, such as “land use, species introduction and removal, fertilizer use and pest control, harvest and resource consumption, climate change” and others. (MA Synthesis, 2005, vii).
The MA’s primary objective is to “assess the consequences of ecosystem changes for human well-being and to establish a scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human wellbeing.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, ii) Changes and consequences are reported in Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, a synthesis of the MA, based on findings of the four MA Working Groups. During Leopold’s time, humans were only beginning to see the consequences of poor land use and management, which all too often cannot be seen until after the pendulum has swung wide. By the time the UN initiated the MA in 2001, the expedient judgments that Leopold had warned about had led to widespread environmental issues such as species extinctions, fallow land, pollution, erosion and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide among others. (MA Synthesis, 2005, 1, 5).
The MA’s key findings provide a stark picture of the challenges that lay before us if we want to stop such damaging practices, possibly reverse damages, and move forward more sustainably. Four key findings of the MA are: 1) “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of human time in history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for (provisioning services) food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in diversity of life on Earth.” (loss of biodiversity) 2) While changes in ecosystems have resulted in “substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development” for some, for others they have resulted in costs “in the form of degraded ecosystem services, exacerbating poverty.” 3) “The degradation of ecosystem services could grow worse, blocking the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.” 4) “Reversing the degradation of ecosystems, while meeting increasing demands for their services, can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA has considered, but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices not yet under way.” (MA Synthesis, 2005, pp. 1-20).
In their report Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems, Daily et al state that the major threats to our natural ecosystems and delivery of ecosystem services are “land use changes that cause losses in biodiversity as well as disruption of carbon, nitrogen and other biogeochemical cycles; human-caused invasions of exotic species; releases of toxic substances; possible rapid climate change; and depletion of stratospheric ozone.” (1997, p. 1) These direct drivers of change, which have led to “irreversible” changes through the loss of biodiversity are caused by increases in “land converted to cropland, significant portions of coral reefs lost or degraded, a greater amount of water held up by dams, increases in reactive (biologically available) nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems, and an increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.”(MA Synthesis, 2005, p. 2)
The MA ties the major threats to ecosystems services, first, to five indirect drivers of change, including population change (growth and migration), change in economic activity (economic growth, disparities in wealth, and trade patterns), sociopolitical factors (conflict, public participation in decision making), cultural factors, and technological change. According to the MA, “collectively, these factors influence the level of production and consumption of ecosystem services and the sustainability of production” and can lead to irreversible ecosystem degradation. (MA Synthesis, 2005, p 19). Other threats to sustainable management of ecosystem services identified in the MA include “inappropriate institutional and governance arrangements, market failures and misalignment of economic incentives, social and behavioral factors, underinvestment in technologies that might lead to better use and fewer harmful impacts, and insufficient knowledge or poor use of existing knowledge concerning ecosystem services and management. (MA Synthesis, 2005, p. 20).
Like Leopold, linking ecology with economics, Daily et al state that ecosystem services are “worth many trillions of dollars” and policies are needed “that achieve a balance between sustaining ecosystem services and pursuing the worthy short-term goals of economic development” which, when they cause negative consequences to ecosystems, result in costs that are “hidden from traditional economic accounting,” that are “borne by society at large.” (1997, p. 13)
In conclusion, Leopold’s call for an ethical criteria for conservation helped launch a movement toward sustainable use of ecosystem services, that in turn led to such tools as the MA. Leopold’s ideas were a call to action, pointing to the cause and effect of human use and management of nature’s resources. These ideas are applicable today, and in fact have been and will continue to be instrumental in helping us to achieve our global sustainability goals.  As Leopold stated, as ethics are expanded to “provide fair judgment rather than judgment that is simply expedient” this paves the way to extend ethics to ecological processes. (Leopold, 1933, p 181). While an ethic helps people to choose why to do something, science, with its objectivity, facts-based inquiry, quantification, modeling and other tools, can step in to explain how we might better use, manage and preserve our ecosystem services. Yet, in order to get to this important step, we first needed to change our ideology about ethics, as they relate to our Earth. Leopold pointed the way.
Works Cited:
Beall, Allyson. (2012) ESRP 101 Lectures. “Ecosystem services and biodiversity.” WSU, Accessed via Angel.
Daily, Gretchen C. and Susan Alexander et al. (1997) Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems. Issues in Ecology. Number 2, spring 1997. Washington DC: Ecological Society of America.
Leopold, Aldo. (1933) “The Conservation Ethic.” The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays. Edited by Susan L. Flader and J. Baird Callicott. (1991) Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Washington DC: Island Press. Pp 1-34.