Conclusion: The Friends We Made along the Way

In Bunk Beds with the DevilJames Salzman, an early protégé of the Natu ral Capital Proj ect and now a prominent scholar of ecosystem services, tried to express what it was like surveying the history he was now living (Salzman 2011, 608): "It is hard for me to describe to you how stunning it is from today's vantage that, quite literally, in 1996 I had never heard the term ecosystem services," he recounted."Gretchen [Daily], I, and others were talking about this thing and you would get a blank stare.Now you talk to people and they get it" (608).They most certainly do.Speaking at a moment of still-growing excitement for the concept, Daily and her allies could confidently proclaim that ecosystem services had "inspired a major transformation in the way people think about the environment.Increasingly, ecosystems are seen as capital assets, with the potential to generate a stream of vital life-support services" (Turner and Daily 2008, 25).Their critics, meanwhile, found themselves having to concede that such notions were indeed in ascendant, redefining "the ways conservationists think, the ways they explain the importance of nature to often skeptical policy makers, and the ways they propose to promote its conservation" (Redford and Adams 2009, 785).The idea of ecosystem services had come a long way-and for a time, it really was the case that biologists around world were uniting behind it.Yet Salzman was careful to acknowledge the emerging cracks in this consensus.Noting the "unnatural alliances" heralded by these shifts, he recognized how this may not be all good.A number of folks think we are basically sleeping with the devil."If you start justifying things because of their value, you're not going to win . . .you're fighting a battle you're going to lose."The answer I generally give is Conclusion: The Friends We Made along the Way