Nature provides many benefits for people, yet there are few data on how changes at individual sites impact the net value of ecosystem service provision. A 2002 review found only five analyses comparing the net economic benefits of conserving nature versus pursuing an alternative, more intensive human use. Here we revisit this crucial comparison, synthesizing recent data from 62 sites worldwide. In 24 cases with economic estimates of services, conservation or restoration benefits (for example, greenhouse gas regulation, flood protection) tend to outweigh those private benefits (for example, profits from agriculture or logging) driving change to the alternative state. Net benefits rise rapidly with increasing social cost of carbon. Qualitative data from all 62 sites suggest that monetization of additional services would further increase the difference. Although conservation and restoration did not universally provide greater net value than the alternative state, across a large, geographically and contextually diverse sample, our findings indicate that at current levels of habitat conversion, conserving and restoring sites typically benefits human prosperity.

大自然为人类带来许多好处，但是关于单个地点的变化如何影响生态系统服务提供净值的数据很少。2002年的一项审查发现，只有五项分析比较了保护自然与追求替代性的，更密集的人类使用所带来的净经济利益。在这里，我们重新审视这一至关重要的比较，综合了全球62个站点的最新数据。在对服务进行经济估算的24个案例中，保护或恢复的收益（例如，温室气体调节，防洪）往往超过了私人利益（例如，来自农业或伐木的利润），从而推动了向替代州的转变。随着碳的社会成本的增加，净收益迅速增加。来自所有62个站点的定性数据表明，附加服务的货币化将进一步增加差异。尽管在一个较大的，地理上和背景上不同的样本中，保护和恢复并没有普遍提供比替代状态更大的净值，但我们的发现表明，在当前生境转换的水平上，保护和恢复地点通常有利于人类的繁荣。