1
Ecological Engineering and Ecosystem Services - Theory and Practice

Fábio Carvalho Nunes1, Thaís de Marchi Soares2, Lander de Jesus Alves3, José Rodrigues de Souza Filho4, Cláudia Cseko Nolasco de Carvalho5, and Majeti Narasimha Vara Prasad6

1 Academic Department, Federal Institute Baiano (IFBAIANO), Santa Inês, Bahia, Brazil

2 Department of Soil Science, University of Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil

3 Postgraduate Program in Biology and Biotechnology of Microorganisms, State University of Santa Cruz (UESC), Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil

4 Academic Department, Federal Institute Baiano (IFBAIANO), Catu, Bahia, Brazil

5 Department of Biology, State University of Alagoas, Santana do Ipanema, Alagoas, Brazil

6 School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

1.1 Introduction

In vain we try to snatch the veil from Nature;

She remains mysterious even in bright daylight,

Neither the machine nor any mechanism would reveal

The secrets she hid from us.

Source: Goethe, J. Faust, Part One, Trans. © 1987, Oxford University Press.

Humanity has witnessed magnificent technical-scientific advancements in recent decades. Robots feel the texture of asteroids and smell the atmosphere of Mars, whereas shining dipods dissect the soul of DNA. However, there is a strong existential and ethical imbalance, so much so that some individuals already compare themselves to Olympian gods and feel supralunary,1 so their relationship with the inner (body-mind) and outer (planet Earth) "house" has profoundly changed; they believe that the total translation of the genetic code, human cloning, and interstellar travels are just a matter of time and would represent the last frontier to transcend time-space, as they would no longer be bound to the same body and planet Earth [2].

Society experiences a double hybris associated with our way of seeing and being in the world; it happens because we believe that everything is knowable since mystery and paradox are just what is not yet known, that everything can be manipulated and resources are unlimited [3], and that the wings of humanity can reach the sun: Icarus syndrome.2 When human pride is confronted with the complexity of the Cosmos, it reveals its flight of Icarus, from which perplexity emerges; frustration stems from one's inability to face the abyss imposed by practical life.

The current culture becomes increasingly blind to the mysterious, to the impenetrable in life [4]. This blindness has made systems produced or changed by humanity - called Black Swans by Taleb [5] - increasingly fragile and susceptible to unpredictability. Complex systems created by humanity tend to develop uncontrolled cascades and chains of reactions, which decrease predictability and generate oversizing - the world becomes increasingly technological, although, paradoxically, that makes things even more unpredictable [4].

In contemporary times, it is believed that science can unveil everything, as observed in the advent of Modernity. However, Nature remains mysterious, and it is necessary to humbly acknowledge that "what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning" [6] or, according to Johann von Goethe [7], that Nature "has so much freedom that we, despite our knowledge and science, cannot fully penetrate it."

Indeed, "in vain we try to snatch the veil from Nature," but it does not mean we should not nourish our understanding of the world. The pursuit of knowledge is a source of light; it helps us better understand the world and ourselves, but we must not let ourselves be blinded to the point of feeling like Moirae3 - who control the thread of life - or like lords of Nature. We are more than its dependents: we are Nature becoming aware of itself.

Ecological engineering has emerged and developed in the fruitful context of technological advancements and environmental questioning of the post-World War II period. It has developed methods capable of analyzing matter and energy flows in different ecosystems to highlight economies' dependence on natural sources [8], make sustainability feasible, and enable the cultural transformation of human-Nature relationships.

The concept of ecosystem service has emerged in the wake of ecological engineering development to systematically express, qualify, and quantify the benefits of natural ecosystems for human societies by considering material aspects such as food and raw material supply, as well as immaterial aspects such as culture and religion.

Human beings inhabit the world to nourish the material and immaterial dimensions. We remove natural resources such as water, food, and raw materials from the environment to nourish the material dimension, a process whose direct and indirect adverse impacts vary in magnitudes and range. On the other hand, we do not always need to extract natural resources to nourish the immaterial dimension; our interaction with soil, wind, or mountains is satisfying.

In light of the preceding, it is evident that ecological engineering must go beyond analyzing the dynamics of ecosystems and their contribution to the economy (materials and services) by considering the immaterial dimensions - which are little explored in studies - in a more productive way. The subtlety of the immaterial dimensions makes them difficult to analyze, but that does not mean we should not try.

There is still a long way to go when it comes to measuring ecosystem services, primarily immaterial goods. However, it is worth emphasizing the importance of reflecting about, and improving, the concept of ecosystem service to enable the daily approach and praxis that take into consideration the benefits of ecosystems to other ecosystems that are at different spatial and temporal scales and that end up directly or indirectly affecting systems created by humanity.

Nothing is ready or finished, and the role of science is to point out problems, reveal contradictions, refine meanings, and suggest solutions. Ecological engineering is a relatively new, comprehensive, interdisciplinary science that proposes a different way of seeing our planet. Earth comprises large systems that continuously interact with each other and enable the dynamics of the biosphere, which comprises the anthroposphere and its subsystems (Figure 1.1). Thus, ecological engineering has the challenge of proposing less interventionist engineering strategies that do not weaken systems and favor antifragility (or that do so to a lesser extent).4

Figure 1.1 Global systems and their interactions.

See colour plate section for colour representation of this figure.

Ecological engineering must not forget that natural systems are complex, interdependent, and full of nonlinear responses. It must keep in mind that interventions in complex systems do not necessarily need to be complicated and full of intricacies. Perhaps the primary challenges faced by ecological engineering lie in denying the idea that Nature should be controlled and in showing that heuristic actions can be more effective since are less opaque and, therefore, less unpredictable.

The aims of this chapter are to address issues associated with the aforementioned aspects, primarily the concepts of ecological engineering and ecosystem services, and present and discuss examples of qualitative and quantitative measurements of services supplied by specific ecosystems and practical examples applied in different contexts. The chapter reflects on the need to reframe our perspective and actions and reinvent the human-Nature relationship.

1.2 Ecological Engineering: History and Definition

The basic concepts of ecological engineering were elaborated in the mid-twentieth century, primarily through the contribution of ecologist Howard Thomas Odum. He defined it as the science that analyzes matter and energy flow in ecosystems dominated by humans to show the dependence of human production systems on natural sources, based on quantitative indices. Subsequently, Mitsch and Jorgensen [9] and Mitsch [10] have expanded the concept and defined ecological engineering as the science that accounts for the design of ecosystems and human organization to benefit both, without taking into consideration quantitative indices as determinant factors.

Figure 1.2 Searches on the Scopus database using the term ecological engineering show the evolution (1948-2019) of the number of articles, reviews, and books published in international journals that used the term.

Source: Scopus, © 2020, Elsevier.

Although the initial concepts of ecological engineering were developed in the mid-twentieth century, studies associated with this science only started to gain room in the 1990s, as shown in Figure 1.2. The primary reasons for the increased number of studies about ecological engineering lie in the expansion of international commissions, conferences, and meetings aimed at sustainable development, such as the World Commission on Environment and Development - which published the report "Our Common Future" - [11] - and the Second United Nations...