• Writing about nature started to change in the 1980s from a holistic concept to one dominated by biotic nature. • Much ecosystem services (ESs) writing now excludes abiotic nature, either consciously or unconsciously. • There is no agreement on whether abiotic nature and ‘geosystem services’ (GSs) should be included as ESs. • Iterations of the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) have moved towards including geodiversity-related services as an “abiotic extension”. • ESs and GSs can be brought together in a framework for the benefits society gains from all Environmental Services. Nature and natural capital are generally defined as including both biotic and abiotic features. However, starting in the 1980s most writing on nature and ecosystem services (ESs) came to be dominated by biotic components despite definitions indicating that ecosystems involve both the biotic and abiotic interacting as functioning systems. Because of this biotic approach, geoscientists have developed the idea of geosystem services (GSs) and the benefits they bring to society, all of which are related to the geodiversity of the planet. Some of these services, such as habitat provision, are the foundation of the planet’s biodiversity or related to it, but many, such as gemstones and precious metals, apply independently of life on Earth. The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) was originally intended to exclude abiotic features yet has been including water, a non-living material. Recent iterations of CICES have been struggling with this contradiction and have begun to include an ‘abiotic extension’. In this paper we propose a comprehensive framework that includes both ecosystem and geosystem services (ESs and GSs), categorises both as Environmental Services (EnvSs), and views them as equally important to each other, to society and to the planet’s environmental future.
Gray et al. (2026) studied this question.