Net Benefits

The risks and opportunities of unprecedented landscape changes have not been well managed due in part to the lack of quantitative understanding of the linkage between services of landscape and human well-being. Here, we propose an ecosystem services dependency index (ESDI) system to quantify human dependency on ecosystem services. We demonstrate the construction of EDSI system using household survey data. We substantiate that the developed overall index and sub-indices can reflect the general pattern of households? dependencies on ecosystem services, and their variations across time, space, and different levels of capitals (i.e., natural, human, financial, built/manufactured, and social/political capitals). We substantiate the proposition that the poor are more dependent on ecosystem services and further generalize this proposition as those disadvantaged groups who possess low capitals are more dependent on ecosystem services. Our proposed ESDI system may improve the scientific understanding of human dependency on ecosystem services and provide many management implications for poverty alleviation, targeting priority groups of conservation programs, managing risks and opportunities due to changes of landscapes.