How to Avoid Underselling Biodiversity with Ecosystem Services: A Response to Silvertown.

Silvertown portrays ES as slippery slope from conceptualization [3_TD$DIFF], to valuation [4_TD$DIFF], to monetization and cumulating towards an endpoint of commodification. We disagree with this simplistic summary of the ES literature. The ES framework has stimulated diverse deliberation on why and how we value nature [2], the equity implications of how non-market and market values are distributed and managed [3], and how best we can communicate often overlooked non-monetary values (and why indeed they are overlooked) [4]. None of these necessarily implies nor demands the ultimate commodification of ES [2].