The services provided by ecosystems play a vital role in human well-being. Although some ecosystem services are easily recognized— food, timber, and freshwater, for example— others may be less apparent. Ecosystems control erosion; reduce the damage caused by natural disasters; and regulate our air, water, and soil quality. A reduction or loss of any of these services and the benefits they provide can have socio-economic ramifications that reverberate beyond environmental damages. Standard environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) do not specifically account for a project’s impacts on ecosystem service benefits. As a result, assessments might overlook stakeholders who are vulnerable to ecosystem change, or miss some of the harmful social consequences of a project’s environ mental effects. Integrating ecosystem services into impact assessments results in a more comprehensive and realistic assessment of a project’s immediate and long-term impacts. Responding to the need to identify and plan for these impacts, ESIA standards have started to integrate ecosystem services into project impact assessments. The Interna tional Finance Corporation’s (IFC) perfor mance standards reflect this trend: as of 2012, IFC-financed projects are required to preserve the benefits from ecosystem ser vices. Going a step beyond project impacts, the IFC also requires that the environmental and social risks and impacts identification process considers a project’s dependence on ecosystem services. Just as development projects can jeopardize the benefits that flow from ecosystem services, changes in ecosystems can endanger project outcomes. Until now, there has been little guidance for ESIA practitioners on how to integrate ecosystem services into their impact assessments. The World Resources Institute, in collaboration with ESIA practitioners, developed the “Ecosystem Services Review for Impact Assessment” (ESR for IA) to fill this gap. The ESR for IA is a structured method that guides practitioners through six steps to incorporate ecosystem services into ESIA at the scoping, baseline and impact analysis, and mitigation stages (Figure ES-1). The ESR for IA can be used for two purposes. First, it identifies measures to mitigate project impacts on the benefits provided by ecosystems. Second, it identifies measures to manage operational depen dencies on ecosystems. These goals are reflected in the ESR for IA’s four outputs: A list of ecosystem services, for inclusion in the ESIA terms of reference; Identification of priority ecosystem services to be considered and stakeholders to be engaged in further stages of the ESIA process, for inclusion in the ESIA report; Assessment of project impacts and dependencies on priority ecosystem services, for inclusion in the ESIA report; and Measures to mitigate project impacts and manage project dependencies on priority ecosystem services, for inclusion in the environmental and social management plans.