The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Ecosystem services are the contributions nature makes to people: pollination of crops, regulation of floods and water quality, fisheries, timber, carbon storage and cultural value. Economies depend on them in ways that rarely appear on balance sheets until they fail. This page sets out how dependencies on nature are mapped, how service supply is modelled and accounted, and how the loss of a service propagates to livelihoods, firms and financial institutions.
Ecosystem services are the contributions nature makes to people, such as crop pollination, flood and water quality regulation, fisheries, timber, carbon storage and cultural value. Economies depend on them in ways that rarely appear on balance sheets until they fail. Dependencies are mapped with tools such as ENCORE and accounted with SEEA Ecosystem Accounting.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Ecosystem services · Landscape A · Assessment cycle 3
materiality, 0 low to 100 high
Scores are placeholders for an assessment the owner completes.
sites near high-integrity areas
| Water scarcity at site 3 | Physical, acute | Abstraction and drought | High | Water stewardship plan |
| Habitat conversion in supply chain | Transition, market | Land use change | Medium | Supplier screening |
| Community objection | Systemic, social | Consent gaps | Medium | Consent records review |
| Pollinator decline | Physical, chronic | Pesticide use | Low | Monitor |
Pollination, flood buffering and livelihood dependencies. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
A service exists only where an ecosystem supplies it and people benefit from it. Pollination needs pollinator habitat near crops; flood buffering needs floodplains upstream of settlements. Mapping supply, flow and demand separately avoids counting services nobody receives.
Firms depend on water, pollination, soil fertility and climate regulation through their suppliers, often several tiers removed. Sector tools map which activities depend on which services, but location decides how material a dependency is.
Fewer pollinators lower yields of dependent crops; degraded catchments raise water treatment costs; lost mangroves raise storm losses. The shock moves through prices, insurance claims and loan performance to sectors far from the site.
Nature-related risk reaches financial institutions as physical risk from service loss, transition risk from regulation and market shifts, and systemic risk when losses correlate. Supervisors are examining how these risks enter credit, market and insurance exposures.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Dependency on nature | The reliance of a business or activity on an ecosystem service, as distinct from its impact on nature. |
| Natural capital | The stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources that yields a flow of benefits to people. |
| SEEA Ecosystem Accounting | The UN statistical standard for accounting for ecosystem extent, condition and services alongside national accounts. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pollinator-dependent crop production | tonnes and share of production by crop | annual | Crop statistics with dependence ratios | ESTIMATED |
| Pollinator visitation rate | visits per flower per hour | per survey | Field observation | OBSERVED |
| Flood regulation service | cubic metres of water retained per event | per event | Hydrological and ecosystem service models | MODELLED |
| Sediment retention | tonnes per hectare per year | annual | Ecosystem service models such as InVEST | MODELLED |
| Sector dependency rating | materiality rating per service | periodic | ENCORE knowledge base | ESTIMATED |
| Ecosystem service supply and use account | physical units and monetary value per service | per accounting period | SEEA Ecosystem Accounting | ESTIMATED |
| Coastal protection by habitats | people or assets kept out of flooding per storm scenario | per scenario | Coastal flood models with and without habitats | MODELLED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) | Links between economic activities, ecosystem services and natural capital | Free, attribution, terms of use |
| National SEEA Ecosystem Accounting accounts | Ecosystem extent, condition and service accounts from statistical offices | Public records, terms per agency |
| InVEST (Natural Capital Project) and ARIES | Open-source models of ecosystem service supply and flow | Open-source software licences |
| FAOSTAT crop production | Crop production statistics for dependency estimates | Free and open, attribution |
| IPBES assessment on pollinators, pollination and food production | Assessed evidence on pollination dependence and drivers of pollinator decline | Free and open, attribution |
| Global Mangrove Watch with coastal flood models | Habitat extent for estimating coastal protection | Free and open, attribution |
Biodiversity Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Finance and planning ministries | How ecosystem services enter national accounts, budgets and development plans | SEEA service accounts with methods stated; dependency maps by sector |
| Central banks and financial supervisors | How nature-related risk enters prudential supervision and scenario analysis | Sector dependencies, location-specific service loss, cascade traces with labels |
| Companies and financial institutions preparing disclosures | Which dependencies and impacts are material under TNFD and how to report them | ENCORE dependencies refined by location; service supply and condition at sites |
| Agriculture agencies and farmer organisations | Where pollinator habitat and soil protection secure yields | Pollinator dependence of crops, habitat proximity, visitation surveys |
Researchers on ecosystem services ask where benefits come from and who relies on them.
A service exists where an ecological function meets a human need. Pollination becomes a service where insect-pollinated crops are grown within the foraging range of pollinators; flood buffering becomes a service where a wetland lies upstream of homes and infrastructure. Supply depends on ecosystem condition and configuration; demand depends on where people are and what they do. Mapping both, and the flow between them, is the core of the field.
Losses transmit through production, prices and public budgets. Reduced pollination lowers yields or raises costs of managed alternatives; degraded catchments raise water treatment costs; lost coastal habitat increases damage and the need for engineered defences. Effects fall hardest on those without substitutes, which is why dependency analysis looks at distribution as well as totals.
Spatial models of supply, demand and flow with geospatial information systems. Many rely on land-cover proxies that miss condition.
Process models estimate water regulation, sediment retention or pollination. They need local data to be credible.
Economic methods estimate value in money where markets do not. Results vary widely with method, and some losses cannot be meaningfully priced.
Mapping which sectors and communities depend on which services, drawing on complex systems modelling. Dependency is not the same as financial materiality.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.