Directions of Scientific Research – Derived from the Study of Ecosystem Value

The ecosystem service value (ESV) is the most popular concept for measuring ecosystem value to support sustainable management recent years. “Ecosystem service was defined as the benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions” (Costanza et al., 1997). The evaluation of ESV uses an approach based on economic and sociological techniques such as market and non-market components as well as willingness-to-pay, etc (Costanza et al., 1997). After more than ten years application of ESV in coastal management and decision-making processes, we found that the losses of ESV calculated were average 10 % of the benefits of human development activities (Ye, 2020; Zhang, et al., 2015). Such a low ESV loss would be hard to stop the frantic development of mankind, and therefore, could not support sustainable management (Ye, 2020; Sheng, et al., 2019). We believe that the underestimation of ESV are mostly caused by an incorrect view of scientific research, and using the concepts and the techniques of economics and sociology, which are all subjective expressions of mankind, not objective expression of ecosystem value (Ye et al., 2020; Sheng, et al., 2019; Zhang, et al., 2015).