The world’s poor, especially subsistence farmers and pastoralists are the first to suffer from the loss of services provided by ecosystems and biodiversity – in other words, the free benefits of nature. These include food and fuelwood from forests, the flow of water and nutrients from forest to field, flood and drought control and soil retention provided by forests, fish from the ocean, and so on. By assigning a value to these services flowing from nature to people, the globa