Review of Future Energy Supply and Targets for Climate Change: The Idea of Ecosystem Services - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 130

come for a majority of poor developing but ecosystems-rich countries to provide
ecosystem services (equity distribution of wealth).
12.7 Justifications for Developing Ecosystem Services
This paper has given a review of world energy outlook scenarios and the trends to
climate change until 2030. Also, it projects that non-renewable energy supply in
the world market will continue to exist for the next 50 years, and projects that the
potential concentration of greenhouse emission gases in the atmosphere will con-
tinue to increase. In addition, non-renewable energy has an apparent inverse rela-
tionship with ecosystem services. Therefore, an increase in non-renewable energy
supply in the world market will reduce ecosystem services, and conversely, ade-
quate development of them will reduce climate change. Since future scenarios
predict that climate change will continue, there is room for ecosystem services to
play a role in mitigating climate change. Therefore, strategies, policies, programs,
projects, and investment in climate change mitigation measures should strongly
favour the development of ecosystem services and provide markets for them.
These markets should give ecosystem services an appropriate value, and ensure
that investments in them enjoy direct economic return. Furthermore, the Kyoto
Protocol mechanisms are inadequate to address the emissions challenge (Schulze
2008). However, caution is needed over investment motives that might favour arti-
ficial projects for clean-up activities at the expense of the benefits that could be
realised from the development of less expensive ecosystem services. Therefore
market-based motive should not be used to justify investment in projects to fight
climate change, but the cost of fighting climate change should be taken into con-
sideration.
12.8 Conclusions
Since emissions from fossil fuels are likely to continue, there is need to analyse
future scenarios in order to effectively develop strategies and measures to meet
desired future climate change targets. The future energy trends may still exist, but
the climate could remain stable if efficient efforts are made in the development
and preservation of ecosystem services. These ecosystem services would then con-
tribute in maintaining the balance in environmental parameters that sustain our
livelihoods. This is because they do not only mitigate emission problems, but also
provide a raft of other services necessary for quality human life e.g. food and
drinking water. Therefore, to live in a future scenario that is sustainable, efforts
towards stable climatic conditions have to be the main priority in adapting a multi-
solution approach to fight climate change. To achieve this, this paper has argued
that the development of ecosystem services, in addition to other responses, is a
worthy and justifiable approach. More so, ecosystem services can play a vital role