"The effort behind this book was initiated after dinner one night, under the Arizona desert sky, at an annual meeting of the Pew Fellows in Conservation and the Environment. A small group gathered informally to lament the near total lack of public appreciation of societal dependence upon natural ecosystems. This ignorance represents but one of a complex of interacting factors responsible for today’s array of anthropogenic disruptions of the biosphere. Yet it clearly represents a major hindrance to the formulation and implementation of policy designed to safeguard earth’s life-support systems. Moreover, lack of understanding of the character and value of natural ecosystems traces ultimately to a failure of the scientific community to generate, synthesize, and effectively convey the necessary information to the public.
A collective strategy to address this problem emerged from the group’s discussion, the first phase of which consisted of producing a rigorous, detailed synthesis of our current understanding of a suite of ecosystem services and a preliminary assessment of their economic value. Thus, our first task was to assemble a broad, interdisciplinary group of natural and social scientists to undertake this work. The individuals we approached were extremely enthusiastic and remained so throughout the project development, reflecting a widely shared recognition of the need for such a book. After producing a first draft of the chapters, contributors met in Purity Springs, New Hampshire (as a special session of the next year’s Pew Fellows meeting), to present and get feedback on their approach and analysis, and to discuss overarching issues pertaining to the whole book. This session was very productive, thanks in no small part to the participation of a large number of Pew Fellows not otherwise engaged in the undertaking. It led to the production of two additional chapters to make the book more comprehensive and coherent.
Coordinating this effort has been a great pleasure from the start, thanks to the support of the contributors, the Island Press staff, and the funders. I could not imagine a group of contributors more enthusiastic, timely, and responsive to queries, reviewers’ suggestions, and general harassment. Nor could I conceive of more helpful and knowledgeable editors: Barbara Dean and Kristy Manning were fully engaged in every aspect of shaping the book. External reviewers of the chapters provided constructive criticism in the best sense; we were very fortunate to have the economics expertise of Michael Dalton and David Layton, who kindly reviewed the book end to end. The project was made possible by the generous support of the Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the W. Alton Jones Foundation; in addition, I was supported during the development of the book by the Winslow and Heinz foundations and by Peter and Helen Bing.
Scott Daily, Frédéric Lelièvre, and Kirsten Ziegenhagen were very helpful and encouraging with various aspects of the book. Jill Otto kindly tracked down obscure references, and Pat Browne and Steve Masley provided tremendous assistance with photocopying. I am grateful to Peter Bing, Sam Hurst, Donald Kennedy, Jonathan Lash, Peter Raven, Walter Reid, Kelsey Wirth, and Tim and Wren Wirth for freely offering advice and assistance with each phase of the group effort. Finally, I owe a special debt to Paul Ehrlich, Michael Kleeman, Jane Lubchenco, John Peterson Myers, Chuck Savitt, and Jeanne Sedgwick for providing extremely valuable insight and guidance on the overall course of this joint undertaking." (Gretchen C. Daily)
Apreciem sem moderação.
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