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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Protecting World’s Remaining “Wild Nature” a Bargain
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August 10, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
A startling new study in the journal “Science” confirms using the
language of economics what many of us know through ecological
intuition - that protecting the World’s remaining wilderness is a
bargain. The scientific study, entitled “Economic Reasons for
Conserving Wild Nature” (Science Aug 9 2002: 950-953), found that
wild nature converted to human use each year actually costs economies
$250 billion a year, every year. "Wild nature" was defined as
habitat in which biodiversity, nonbiotic components, and ecosystem
functioning are sufficiently intact that the majority of ecosystem
services continue to be sustainably and reliably supplied.
Protection and restoration of wild nature was found to have a
benefit-cost ratio of around 100-1. One author, David Constanza of
the University of Vermont, noted "Natural capital is going to be more
valuable as it becomes more scarce. In many cases we have passed the
point where development is worth more to us than conservation."
Global ecological sustainability through widespread habitat
protection and restoration is the moral, ecological and indeed
economic imperative of our time.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title: World's wealth still relies on nature
Economists find wilderness worth more than farm land
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Date: August 9, 2002
Byline: Tim Radford, science editor
Preservation of the world's remaining wilderness could be the
ultimate bargain. Scientists and economists calculate that forests,
wetlands and other natural ecosystems are worth far more to human
economies than the farm or building land that could replace them.
They report today in the US journal Science that the wilderness
converted to human use each year actually costs economies $250bn a
year, every year.
Put another way, it would cost the world $45bn to extend and
effectively protect threatened areas of temperate and tropical
forest, mangrove swamps, coral reefs and so on. But in return, these
global reserves would supply humans with at least $4,400bn in "goods
and services". This is a benefit-cost ratio of around 100-1. And
that, they say, is a low estimate of the likely benefits of better
and more sustained conservation.
"The economics are absolutely stark. We thought the numbers would
favour conservation, but not by that much," said Andrew Balmford of
the University of Cambridge.
David Constanza of the University of Vermont said: "We've been
cooking the books for a long time by leaving out the worth of nature.
Economics has traditionally focussed on the market. But we have been
finding that a lot of what is valuable to humans takes place outside
of the market."
Humans depend on insects to pollinate crops, on forests to recycle
carbon dioxide, slow erosion and prevent floods, on estuarine swamps
as fish hatcheries and to buffer towns from storms and tidal surges.
Ultimately, natural ecosystems provide humans with food, water, air,
shelter, fuel, clothing and medicines. In 1997 economists tried to
put a price on the things nature supplies, and arrived at a total of
£33 trillion a year.
This year, with backing from the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
British and US scientists did their sums again.
They surveyed 300 case studies of what happened when the natural
environment was converted to human use, and chose five for closer
analysis. These included the intensive logging of a Malaysian forest,
a Cameroon forest converted to small scale agriculture and commercial
plantation, a mangrove swamp in Thailand turned to shrimp farming, a
Canadian marsh drained for agriculture, and a Philippine coral reef
dynamited for fishing.
In each case the value of the natural ecosystem - as storm and flood
protection, for sustainable hunting and tourism, or to soak up carbon
dioxide - outweighed the returns from human use. The Malaysian forest
would have been 14% more valuable left standing. The Canadian marsh
would have returned 60% if left alone for hunting, trapping and
fishing.
The research is published as world leaders prepare for the
Johannesburg summit on sustainable development. Two thirds of the
world's fisheries are already harvested beyond sustainability. One
fifth of the world's topsoil has been lost in the last 50 years,
along with one fifth of agricultural land and one third of forests.
Forest destruction has slowed, according to Science today - but an
area twice the size of Belgium is still vanishing each year.
"Natural capital is going to be more valuable as it becomes more
scarce. In many cases we have passed the point where development is
worth more to us than conservation," said Professor Constanza.
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