Table 2-2-1 Global status of ecosystem services

Services	Sub-category	Status	Notes
Providing services
Food	Crops	▲	Substantial production increase
Livestock	▲	Substantial production increase
Capture fisheries	▼	Declining production due to overharvest
Aquaculture	▲	Substantial production increase
Wild foods	▼	Declining production
Fiber	Timber	+/−	Forest loss in some regions, growth in others
Cotton, hemp, silk	+/−	Declining production of some fibers, growth in others
Wood fuel	▼	Declining production
Genetic resources resource	▼	Lost through extinction and crop genetic resource loss
Biochemicals, natural medicines, pharmaceuticals	▼	Lost through extinction, overharvest
Water	Fresh water	▼	Unsustainable use for drinking, industry and irrigation; amount of hydro energy unchanged, but dams increase ability to use that energy
Regulating Services
Air-quality regulation	▼	Decline in ability of atmosphere to cleanse itself
Climate regulation	Global	▲	Net source of carbon sequestration since mid-century
Regional and local	▼	Preponderance of negative impacts
Water regulation	+/−	Varies depending on ecosystem change and location
Erosion regulation	▼	Increased soil degradation
Water purification and waste treatment	▼	Declining water quality
Disease regulation	+/−	Varies depending on ecosystem change
Pest regulation	▼	Natural control degraded through pesticide use
Pollination	▼	Apparent global decline in abundance of pollinators
Natural hazard regulation	▼	Loss of natural buffers (wetlands, mangroves)
Cultural services
Spiritual and religious values	▼	Rapid decline in sacred groves and species
Aesthetic values	▼	Decline in quantity and quality of natural lands
Recreation and ecotourism	+/−	More areas accessible but many degraded

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

resources by converting it into the size of land/water area. (See the Column below.) According to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the Ecological Footprint has exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity since the 1980s (in terms of ecologically productive land/water area). This overshooting status means that people are consuming resources faster than nature can recover from the damage caused thereby, and that the biocapacity can no longer keep pace with human consumption.

Japan is now experiencing population decreasing. But, the United Nations Population Division projects that the global population, currently about 6.5 billion people, will continue to increase in the future, with the estimated population as of 2050 being over 9 billion (medium variant). If the global demand for ecosystem services continues to increase, the demand is most likely to exceed the potential supply of the Earth’s ecosystems, possibly resulting in the devastation of ecosystems themselves.

In particular, increased dependence of human activities based on fossil fuel since the Industrial Revolution has had a serious impact on ecosystems and their core element, biodiversity. As mentioned above in Section 1, sound ecosystems that are supported by rich biodiversity are supposed to have the ability to self-recover and correct any ill conditions by coordinating their functions. Even if any temporal malfunction happens due to the damage from drought, tsunami, cold wave, flood or other natural disasters, ecosystems are supposed to be able to recover and regain their integrity. However, the recent impacts of human activities on ecosystems are strong enough to impair the said self-recovery ability. Also, recent extensive damages of biodiversity have been generating a vicious spiral of deteriorating the ecosystem’s integrity.

From the standpoint of the carbon cycle, $ CO_{2} $ emissions caused by massive combustion of fossil fuels can be defined as the discharge of sequestrated $ CO_{2} $ that ecosystems took a very long time to fix. This affects the water cycle too. This has changed precipitation intensity and conditions as well as the abundance and melting seasons of ice and snow, and has altered river flows significantly, and all of those changes could fatally affect water resources for future generations.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) aforementioned analysis of the benefits (services) that people obtain from the Earth’s ecosystems, and also evaluated the recent global state and trends of ecosystem services by focusing on twenty-four specific quantifiable services for the past several decades (Table 2-2-1). Through this evaluation, it has been found that fifteen services, including essential services such as water purification, air quality regulation and natural hazard regulation, have been degraded as a result of the human abuse or modification of ecosystems to satisfy our demand (e.g., increased demand for food) while four services