Ecosystem services are vital to human survival and wellbeing, and the judicious management of the systems that produce these benefits is essential. Ecosystem service indicators are increasingly recognized as a key part of assessing whether ecosystem services are being managed appropriately and used sustainably.

Developing ecosystem services indicators is challenging, for example:

1. Theabilityofindicatorstoconveyinformation about ecosystem services is low overall, although it varies widely among services;

2. The indicators available for most ecosystem services are not comprehensive and are often inadequate to characterize the diversity and complexity of the benefits they provide;

3. Data are often insufficient to support the use of these indicators; and

4. Indicators for regulating and cultural services lag behind provisioning services in each of the limitations identified above.

Further, we propose that a key gap hampering 5 the development of useful, relevant indicators
is that many of them measure the levels of
ecosystem services provided by a particular area

(e.g. crop production, water regulation), but do not provide an indication of the actual benefits gained by people (food, domestic water) and how these benefits are distributed across space and time. These include economic, as well as social and cultural benefits. Understanding thebenefitflowsfromecosystemservices

is essential if we are to be able to assess the consequences of changes in ecosystem services for human wellbeing – an aim which is at the heart of most policies and programs focused on ecosystem service management. However, benefit flows remain a poorly understood and poorly quantified component of ecosystem service measurement and monitoring programs.

These guidelines have been produced to support the development of ecosystem service indicators at the national and regional level for uses in reporting, assessments, policy making, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem management, environmental management, development planning and education.

The guidance contains four key sections:

1. Introductiontoecosystemserviceindicators (section 1)

2. Steps in developing ecosystem service indicators (section 2)

3. Mainstreaming ecosystem service indicators (section 3)

4. Ecosystem indicators developed and piloted in South Africa (section 4)