Editing Ecosystem Services (section)

== <span style="color: #FFFFFF;">Understanding</span> ==
Ecosystem services are the '''Infrastructure of Nature'''.

'''1. The Four Types''':
* '''Provisioning (The "Store")''': What we ''take''. Food, fish, timber, fresh water.
* '''Regulating (The "Machine")''': What we ''use''. Bees pollinating, wetlands stopping floods, forests cooling the air.
* '''Cultural (The "Spirit")''': How we ''feel''. Hiking in a park, the beauty of a mountain, the sacredness of a forest.
* '''Supporting (The "Foundation")''': The invisible work. Soil being made, oxygen being produced. Without these, the others don't exist.

'''2. The Economic Value''':
If the world's bees vanished, it would cost $150 billion ''per year'' to manually pollinate our crops. If we cut down the mangroves in New York, it would cost billions to build sea walls to replace the flood protection they provide for free. Nature is the world's most valuable "company."

'''3. The Tragedy of the Externality''':
When a company cuts down a forest to make paper, they make money. But the city downstream loses their "Water Purification" service and has to build a multi-million dollar treatment plant. The company got the "Provisioning" profit, but the public paid for the lost "Regulating" service. Environmental economics aims to make the company pay for that loss.
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