In the past two decades, the concept of ecosystem services has gained prominence in ecology. Since ecosystem services are all the material goods and intangible benefits that the ecosystems offer to humans for their survival and well-being, the research on them has found favor at the intersection of ecology, economics, and social sciences, all disciplines with the goal of finding strategies to ensure sustainability. For these disciplines, the self-regulating abilities of ecosystems and their management of crucial ecological functions, thus helping mitigate human impacts, are particularly important and of great interest.

All this has paved the way for a new field of research: the evaluation of ecosystem services . Initially, the focus was on measuring and monitoring the dynamics that generate these services, but later it shifted toward implementing systems that assign a market value to ecosystem services. These systems include payment schemes for ecosystem services, known as Ecosystem Services Payment Schemes (PES), mechanisms like carbon credits, and the other type of nature-based credits that have been introduces more recently: biodiversity credits. The idea is to visualize the value and importance of a certain function or a certain structure of an ecosystem by translating it into an unit that everyone could understand: money.

However, assigning an economic value to ecosystem services and the outputs of natural ecological processes raises several issues.

The first problem is that the evaluation of these services increasingly falls into the hands of economists who, while having solid expertise in their field, do not always have adequate training in ecology. This happens especially in cases where a company wants to improve its “environmental” profile through actions to compensate for its impacts but wants to do so with a typical business mindset: achieving maximum gain or advantage while spending as little as possible.

And regarding this, I recall that an old teacher of mine used to say that to assess a certain aspect of a complex thing, you need to turn to the specialist who cares about that aspect more than other related aspects. For example, if we want to assess a used car, we can go to either a mechanic or a bodywork expert, but if our goal is to ensure that the engine is reliable, it’s better to consult the mechanic rather than the bodywork expert who especially looks at the surface of the vehicle.

Similarly, evaluating ecosystem services requires specific skills, as these are not only relevant to the ecosystems themselves but also to the connected social and economic systems. However, in reality, ecologists – who are the only experts really trained in understanding and interpreting environmental dynamics with an approach based on system thinking – are often excluded from this type of evaluation, leaving the field to specialists who do not always fully understand the complexity of the ecological system.

The risks of economic drifts

This situation can lead to embarrassing, if not outright useless or harmful, consequences. Chief among these is the recent drift in some areas of the world regarding voluntary carbon credit mechanisms.

Climate change is one of the most complex and dangerous challenges humanity faces, with intense and unpredictable effects that require systemic thinking and strong strategies. On the one hand, strategies are being sought to adapt to mitigate these changes; on the other, policies lack clear direction, even though scientists agree that urgent action is needed and that technological developments should be directed toward sustainable solutions. Yet even when specific sectors commit to sustainable practices, these efforts risk being undone by general carelessness or neglect. In this convoluted context, many entities have begun developing a business in the environmental credit market.

How carbon credits work and their limitations

Carbon credits are economic tools used to limit CO₂ emissions. In practice, an entity that manages to reduce its emissions below a certain standard can sell the corresponding credits to companies that exceed that limit. If properly implemented, the carbon credit market can help reduce pollution and promote more sustainable practices. However, voluntary carbon credit systems present significant issues.

One of the main drawbacks is the lack of a standardized and scientifically robust method to accurately quantify carbon sequestration, as well as lack of rigorous verification. This can lead to greenwashing practices, where companies buy credits only to seemingly offset their emissions without actually reducing their environmental impact.

There are also other systems where a company wishing to reduce its carbon footprint declares it contributes to the maintenance of a natural area. Unfortunately, in such cases, the credit is based on the principle of avoidance: it’s not that the natural area sequesters a large amount of carbon every day up to the point that it is able to offset the emission of the first emissive company, but just that the natural area today exists. So the polluting company might say: “if that natural area no longer existed, the carbon sequestered in the biomass might be released into the atmosphere, so I am willing to maintain it.” But in the meantime, the polluting company continues to emit at a higher rate than the area sequesters.

In short, the voluntary carbon credit market often fails to reflect the true ecological value of conservation activities, focusing almost exclusively on emission balances, approximating or coming up with at least imaginative systems. Even more gravely, it potentially takes the form of a virtual currency. Just imagine the disaster that could occur if a company with energy-intensive and high-emission processes also purchased a large park or a portion of a forest, having carbon credits measured based on what that area sequesters annually. If it managed to set up a system in which that carbon amount is assigned a monetary value, that amount essentially becomes a bitcoin. And what would a smart entrepreneur do? They could move money from the highly profitable but also highly polluting company into the coffers of the company—also run by them—that owns the natural area… basically, transferring from one pocket to another. Not to mention that the natural area, from the moment of purchase, would most likely be closed off to the public. So, no more cultural and recreational ecosystem services.

Moreover, there’s a major problem with estimating the carbon that area sequesters. First of all, if the people tasked with the evaluation lack a background and expertise in biogeochemistry, something will surely be missed, and they will have to settle for making estimates riddled with assumptions, approximations, and rounding errors. Carbon sequestration evaluation and modeling require significant scientific effort, and although consultants probably do their best to be accurate, honest, and transparent, they will still have to consider that the one requesting the evaluation is the one who pays them. If the client believes that a certain area sequesters carbon, the consultants will not be too eager to contradict them, just to avoid losing the job and payment.

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and biodiversity credits

Similarly, Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) are schemes that economically incentivize ecosystem conservation by recognizing the value of the services they provide (such as water purification or soil protection). In theory, these systems can promote environmental protection, but in practice, several issues arise.

One of the most debated problems is the effectiveness and fairness of these systems. Who sets the economic value? Who benefits? And who pays for its conservation? What guarantees are there that the beneficiaries of the funds raised through PES are indeed fulfilling the protection, conservation, and impact mitigation roles they claimed? There are also cases where agricultural companies, in order to obtain funds from private PES schemes, have indeed maintained flowering stable meadows but have started fertilizing them to have abundant blooms, thus increasing their ecological and carbon footprint. Furthermore, PES risks creating a utilitarian view of nature, treating it as a commodity to be bought and sold rather than as a shared heritage to be protected.

Finally, biodiversity credits, aimed at compensating for habitat and species loss with conservation efforts in other areas, have raised additional concerns. In many cases, it’s difficult to assess whether such compensations are truly effective or simply shift the problem from one place to another.

In light of all this, we must ask ourselves if there is still room for true ecology in today’s environmental assessments. Evaluating an ecosystem through an economic lens risks diminishing its complexity and intrinsic value. The role of the ecologist, which should be central in these analyses, is often marginalized in favor of market-driven logic.

If nothing else matters but profit, what place will ecology have in a world that measures nature’s value solely in terms of money? The challenge for the future will be to reintegrate a genuinely ecological approach into environmental policies, focusing on the respect and preservation of ecosystems in their entirety.