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Ecosystem services & benefits

Ecosystem services are the goods and services from nature that deliver benefits to human wellbeing. These benefits are manifold: nature can provide directly for communities' livelihoods, it is capable of regulating air and water quality as well as delivering flood prevention or the opposite (retaining of water for dry periods), nature provides important recreation options such as doing sports or hiking in nature, and nature can support agricultural crop production. These are just some examples of the many benefits nature delivers.

In this part of the management toolkit, several benefits of nature to human wellbeing are discussed. Topics include the integration of ecosystem services in management planning and how to map such services, the use of nature-based solutions that provide environmental, social and economic benefits and the importance of crop wild relatives.