Measuring Nature's Benefits

This research paper by the World Resources Institute assesses current ecosystem services indicators to determine their effectiveness in informing policy-makers. The analysis identifies significant limitations in how these indicators convey information, their comprehensiveness, and the availability of supporting data, noting that regulating and cultural services are particularly underserved compared to provisioning services.

• The analysis of current ecosystem services indicators revealed four primary limitations that hinder their use by policy-makers: a generally low ability to convey information about services, a lack of comprehensiveness in characterizing the diversity and complexity of benefits, insufficient supporting data, and a specific lag in indicators for regulating and cultural services compared to provisioning services.
• The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved over 1,300 experts from 95 countries, found that more than 60 percent of ecosystem services were already degraded and predicted this trend would accelerate over the following 50 years.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Measuring Nature's Benefits. https://www.wri.org/research/measuring-natures-benefits

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Measuring Nature's Benefits. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/measuring-natures-benefits.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Measuring Nature's Benefits |url=https://www.wri.org/research/measuring-natures-benefits |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendmeasuring, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Measuring Nature's Benefits}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/measuring-natures-benefits}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }