Modern scientists use the concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) to understand and more clearly define the links between human well-being and the ecosystem. The ES concept facilitates communication of economic and non-economic values and their integration into reporting systems. Nevertheless, the integration of the ES concept into policy planning and decision-making has never been fully realized. The obstacles to this integration are diverse, and given scarce attention within the literature. This paper, hence, seeks to systematically synthesize this information to essentially portray the profile of the ES concept in relation to policy and decision-making, based on a systematic review. Through the compilation of prevalent issues and suggestions from practitioners in a wide range of decision contexts, ways toward realizing the ultimate prospects of the ES concept could be rendered more visible. In total, we identified and synthesized 74 papers in this review. Our results show that the prospects of ES fall into three categories (human-nature connections, ES as a multi-use tool, and ES as an integrated approach to decision making); that there are three distinctive obstacles to the integration of ES in policy and planning (lack of consensus about in definitions, or terminologies, guidance), over-reliance on monetization, and the need for policy backups); and five ways forward (term diversity, scales issues, monetization, conceptual frameworks, and the integration of ES and environmental assessment). The paper also provides suggests some research questions which may contribute to filling the highlighted knowledge gaps with regard to the further promotion of the ES concept in decision-makers’ agendas