Sustainability

Ecosystems

Ecosystem

Balance change and consequences

When ecosystems are exploited, their balance is modified. As a consequence, health and productive capacity are compromised. Each human intervention on the environment management should therefore be studied according to the consequences that it might have for the ecosystem well being and its productivity. Such a perspective requires the whole of the ecosystem to be considered. At this respect it is necessary to know the ecosystem in a detailed way and assess its productive capacity and the consequences that the human intervention might have. It is important to assign a value to the goods and services provided by the ecosystem, and it is important to define an action policy. This assessment process has been done in very rare cases. In fact the global or local degradation of ecosystems has not been estimated so far. People do not even know if men will be able to recover a part of this degrade with adequate restoration measures.