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Environmental services are “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems.”1 These
benefits may be categorized as provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural
services (Table 1). The primary use by herders of grasslands is grazing by livestock, and
the production of livestock products makes major contributions to herders’ livelihoods.
These products include food products and a range of other products, many of which are
both consumed locally and traded internationally. Non-livestock rangeland products may
also be important components of herders’ incomes as well as provide food and support
human health.2 In addition to these provisioning services, grasslands provide ecosystemregulating
services, such as conservation of biodiversity in grassland habitats, regulation
of soil erosion and sandstorms, and regulation of the climate through carbon sink and
source functions.3 Cultural services also have a variety of values to different stakeholders
in grasslands and other grazing lands. The provision of regulating services is particularly
influenced by the activities of herds and herders, often in unintended ways. These services
are therefore “externalities” of livestock husbandry that affect other stakeholders both
on- and off-site.4 These environmental services are valued in different ways by different
stakeholders, but, unlike traded livestock products, they are mostly not remunerated,
often resulting in undersupply of positively valued environmental services.