Ecosystem Services vs Biodiversity

I was just reading in Nature Conservancy magazine about the idea of "ecosystem services". The basic idea (or my oversimplification of it) is that a good way to sell people on the idea of conservation is to relate it to human needs - in other words, we should protect the ecosystem because it provides us with the services that we need.

The "opposite" of ecosystems services would be "biodiversity", or the idea that having a diversity of biology is a good thing, not necessarily just the biology that helps humans.

Apparently this is a debate of sorts in the conservation world. I can see both sides. But I think that the majority of people in the world, especially in developing countries, would more easily buy into conservation efforts if they felt they were improving their own life, and not just the life of a spotted owl.

Here is a good overview of the concept of ecosystem services. It contains a link to an article in Current Biology with a lot more details.