What Are the Main Options for Applying the Multiple-Use Water Services Paradigm? - Rethinking Infrastructure Design for Multi-Use Water Services - page 53

t from more, closer and cheaper water.
Rainwater harvesting schemes can provide water for household needs and
commercial gardens.
Commercial gardening boosts income generation, reinforcing water infra-
structure sustainability.

Businesses can also bene

10 How Can We Calculate the Value of MUS Systems?

10.1 An Ecosystem Services Approach

Ecosystem Services (ESS) are the conditions and processes through which natural
ecosystems and the species that make them up sustain and ful l human life. Eco-

system services are also de ts people receive from ecosystems and

can be used to describe connections between nature and human welfare (MA 2005 ).
Ecosystem services changes result in outcomes, bene

ned as all bene

ts or harms that people value,

introducing the need of valuation and quanti cation of social welfare. Ecosystems

and their functions and processes provide outputs of goods and services, which
generate bene ts to human populations that can then be measured as increases in

human well-being (EFTEC 2005 ; Fig. 7 ).