Economics of Soil "Ecosystem" Services: Roadblocks and Possible Solutions.

A little over fifty years ago, the idea surfaced of associating monetary values with the services provided by nature to human societies. The debate on this topic, especially concerning wetlands and marshes, was very lively in the sixties and seventies, but soil scientists by and large stayed clear of it until eventually, in the 80s, interest in it waned. Since the late 90s and particularly since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report in 2005, the monetary valuation or monetization of "ecosystem" services (MES) is again the object of significant attention. Many governments and international agencies are betting heavily on it being a silver bullet to include nature explicitly into economic activities. Interestingly, in the growing literature on soil ES, very few articles deal with the valuation of these services, and especially with the monetary valuation demanded by the financial sector and policy makers. In this context, the present talk will analyze some of the causes of the reticence of soil scientists and ecologists to engage with an approach that surveys reveal is often making them uncomfortable. Since the ES program was aimed originally at this monetary valuation and, beyond it, at various schemes for payments of ES, one may wonder therefore whether the whole ES program is still sound when applied to soils. A reflection on soil functions and services is intrinsically of interest, if only to educate the public and policy makers about the crucial need to conserve soils, but what else can be done concretely with the information? Fortunately, several alternatives to the monetization of soil ES exist, which do not raise the same ethical or practical objections as MES, and appear to afford fruitful avenues toward the same ultimate goal, i.e., to put us in a position to hand over to our descendants a planet earth that is still somewhat habitable.