timothywell: What's the economic value of nature?

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

What's the economic value of nature?

Bob Holmes, consultant

(Image: Tim Laman/NGS/Getty)

Putting a price on the impact of nature may help us understand its true worth, argues environmentalist Tony Jupiter in What Has Nature Ever Done for Us?

HOW much is nature worth, in measurable financial value? Most economists - and politicians - would answer in terms of the price of timber, pasture for grazing or tourism in national parks. But nature delivers far, far more than that. In What has Nature ever Done for Us?, Tony Juniper aims to bring that knowledge to a broader public.

One of the UK's leading environmentalists, Juniper lays out the many ways that natural ecosystems pay dividends to human societies. Some are obvious: soils support crop growth; photosynthetic plants are the ultimate source of all the food that nourishes us; and thanks to biodiversity, we have access to a wealth of genes to breed better crop varieties and develop new antibiotics and other drugs.

Others are easier to overlook: insects pollinate two-thirds of all crop plants; natural predators keep pests in check; plants, soils and oceans store carbon; and coral reefs, mangroves and wetlands protect coastlines from storms and flooding. Add it all up, Juniper says, and nature contributes trillions to the world's economy every year.

This is important stuff that policymakers and the public need to be reminded of, and Juniper piles on example after example. Those who are new to the subject will learn plenty that will open their eyes to the importance of these "ecosystem services". That alone makes the book worthwhile for casual readers, though they may struggle at times with Juniper's convoluted syntax. I found myself having to take a second run at some of his sentences.

The real battle to protect nature, though, will be fought in boardrooms and government committees, where hard cash is the lingua franca. Putting financial value on natural services is fraught with guesswork, of course, but Juniper does the best he can. He reports, for example, that the coral reefs and mangroves of Belize yield about $15 million in fish, at least $150 million in tourism and about $150 million in storm protection every year. And he says New York City has saved about $7 billion by drawing its drinking water from a protected watershed instead of treating and filtering it.

Unfortunately, only a few of the examples in Juniper's book have been worked through in such detail. As a result, the sceptical businesspeople and politicians that he really needs to convince are likely to come away saying "show me more". But if this book encourages them to ask, it will have done its job.