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Living organisms and inanimate structures on the Earth have perpetually influenced each other thus creating dynamic balance which allows for gradual development and change. The growing number of people and the development of their abilities have resulted in a situation, in which man can radically change and destroy not only local ecosystems but literally all fundamental conditions for the current forms of life on Earth, thus jeopardizing its own sustainability. The moral and rational appeals to limit the current use of natural resources have not brought the needed rectification of our behaviour. The concept of "ecosystem services" explores the possibilities of an adequate financial expression of those services provided by nature which we have considered so common that they are free. Financial representation of the copious forms of services by forests, wetlands, mangroves and other ecosystem, on which the existence of the humankind will continue to depend, can considerably contribute to the widest public's understanding of the necessity of their protection and unsustainability of the existing style of life. The book explains the foundations necessary for understanding the main function of ecosystems in a clear way: the use of the sunshine in photosynthetic production of biomass in plants, the water cycle and the danger of its lack not only in sanitary and industrial needs, but mainly for ensuring further necessary increase in the food production, the causes and consequences of increasing the concentration of greenhouse gasses with the inevitable impact on the climate and nature. The scholar emphasizes the natural scientific aspects, however the urgency of measures leading to reduction of the consumption of non-renewable resources and the functioning of ecosystems have compelled him to formulate his own opinions on the wider social and ethical aspects of the obvious dependence of man on nature.