I wish that the public and policymakers had a much better understanding of ecosystem services - the processes through which ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfil human life. These services can be defined based upon aesthetic values, based upon consumptive values, or based upon the value of supporting services.

Aesthetic and consumptive values are easily comprehended by society, but the value of supporting services is wholly underappreciated and misunderstood. This value includes the mitigation of foods and droughts; the stabilisation of coastlines; the decomposition of terrestrial wastes; the protection of the Earth's living surface, from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the Sun; partial control of climate; the generation, preservation and maintenance of soils, and the renewal of their fertility; the dispersal of seeds; pollination; the recycling of nutrients; the vast control of pests, and of agricultural and natural ecosystems; and the maintenance of a large genetic library, in the language of DNA.

Because these services do not carry prices, in the traditional economic sense, they are considered to be worthless - except when added to a system or, more worryingly, lost. If these services did carry prices, then we would be much more attuned to the deterioration of the environment and to the potential impact of this deterioration upon society. These services emanate from ecosystems, over variable spatial and temporal scales, and are based upon millions upon millions of interactions amongst organisms - plants and animals - across the biosphere.

Moreover, these services do not exist by virtue of supporting Homo sapiens. Rather, Homo sapiens exists because these services permit it to do so, as recently argued by the eminent ecologist Simon Levin. Because most of these services do not have technological substitutes, the continued simplification and alteration of the biosphere, through a range of anthropogenic stresses, may threaten their delivery. Bearing in mind that these services underpin our existence, and yet our understanding of the functioning of complex adaptive ecological systems is still in its infancy, the global experiment currently being conducted by humanity may have serious consequences for future generations.