An inside account of the meteoric rise and disillusioning fall of ecosystem services—an idea once heralded as the way forward for conservation.

Biologists Unite explores the political reshaping of global biodiversity conservation through the story of ecosystem services, a burgeoning field of science dedicated to analyzing the many valuable “services” nature provides to humanity. What is at stake in ongoing attempts to recast “nature” as “natural capital”? Why did this way of thinking come to gain such widespread currency among conservationists? And what can the contemporary embrace of ecosystem services tell us about the changing politics of environmentalism?

Daniel Chiu Suarez offers an intimate, insider perspective on these hotly debated questions: an ethnographic portrait of ecosystem services told through the experiences and predicaments of its core champions—chief among them, life scientists—toiling at the forefront of diverse efforts aimed at “mainstreaming” its tenets across a range of governance contexts.

Drawing on more than half a decade of participant observation conducted around two influential initiatives—the Natural Capital Project and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)—the book narrates the meteoric “rise” of ecosystem services but also, and perhaps more crucially, how fragile its influence turned out to be when put to the test.