International audienceHighlights(3-5 bullets max 85 char each) Abstract (should be 250 words) The current dominance of " ecosystem services " as a guiding concept for environmental management – where it appears as a neutral, obvious, taken-for-granted concept – hides the fact that there are choices implicit in its framing and in its application. In other words, it is a highly political concept.Following a political ecology framework, we investigate the origin and agency of the ecosystem services idea, its relationship to multi-scale power structures that constrain or facilitate certain outcomes, the practical difficulties of applying the idea, and its impacts for different parts of society and the environment.Building on the literature, on an analysis of theMillennium Ecosystem Assessment, and onbrief examples from tropical rain forest contexts such as Brazil and Madagascar, we investigate four moments or processes in the construction and application of the ecosystem services idea:discursive (the emergence of the term), ontological (what knowledge does the concept allow?), scientific (debates and difficulties in its practical application), and political (who wins, who loses?).All four components have ecological and political consequences. First, choices are made during the framing and institutionalization of the concept that mobilize, for example, a human-nature dichotomy and the pre-eminence of ecological and economic perspectives. Second, choices are made in the application of the concept, in terms of the type of service, the scale of analysis, and the kind of market rationality, that create winners and losers.The concept is a boundary object with widespread appeal, used in diverse ways by different interests to justify different kinds of interventions that at times might be totally opposed

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