Embargoed until 5 P.M.
NSF PR 97-36 - May 14, 1997
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone
numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current
contact information at media
contacts.
Value of the World's Ecosystem Services
If we had to pay for the services that nature provides,
how much would it cost?
A paper appearing in the May 15th issue of the journal
Nature, co-authored by 13 ecologists, geographers
and economists, estimates this value at between $16
and $54 trillion per year.
The natural and social scientists who produced the
estimate are affiliated with universities across the
U.S., the Netherlands, Sweden and Argentina. The group
was organized by Robert Costanza of the University
of Maryland's Institute of Ecological Economics in
College Park. The research was sponsored by the National
Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Ecological Analysis
and Synthesis at the University of California at Santa
Barbara.
"Traditionally, ecological concerns have been considered
to be a financial burden on economic development,"
says Scott Collins, director of NSF's long-term ecological
research program, which funds the NSF center. "The
study by Costanza and colleagues demonstrates, however,
that ecosystem functions do not compete with economic
values. Rather, they are intimately linked with, and
are positive influences on, the global economy."
The authors of the Nature paper assembled information
from a wide range of studies on the value of a broad
range of ecosystem services. These include not only
such familiar items as food production, raw materials,
recreation and water supply, but also services which
are less apparent, like regulation of climate and
atmospheric gases, water cycling, erosion control,
soil formation, nutrient cycling and the purification
of wastes.
Estimates were made for each of 17 categories of services
for the range of environments on earth, including
both marine and terrestrial environments. The authors'
estimates indicate that coastal environments, including
estuaries, coastal wetlands, beds of seagrass and
algae, coral reefs and continental shelves are of
disproportionately high value. They cover only 6.3
percent of the world's surface, but are responsible
for 43 percent of the value of the world's ecosystem
services. These environments are particularly valuable
in regulating the cycling of nutrients which control
the productivity of plants on land and in the sea,
according to Costanza.
The researchers note that the majority of the value
from ecosystem services is currently outside the market
system. That is, although some services, such as food
production, water supply and raw materials are traded
in economic markets, most of the world's ecosystem
services are not. "This means that current market
signals are not adequately incorporating the value
of these services," says Costanza.
The paper's authors acknowledge the huge uncertainties
involved in their estimate, but also suggest that
their values are probably on the low side. Explains
Costanza, "This is because improving the estimates
-- by, for example, studying more ecosystem services
more intensively -- would likely increase their value."
The authors also caution that their economic estimates
ignore the fact that many ecosystem services are "literally
irreplaceable."
One practical use of the estimates, the authors write,
is to "help modify systems of national accounting
to better reflect the value of ecosystem services
and natural capital." Some attempts to do just that
indicate a leveling of national welfare since 1970,
while GNP has continued to increase. "One way to look
at it," the authors continue, "is that if one were
trying to replace the services of ecosystems, one
would need to increase global GNP by at least $33
trillion." The global GNP is currently about $18 trillion.
A second practical use is for weighing the ecosystem
services lost against the benefits of a particular
project or policy. The paper's authors contend that
making good decisions on questions ranging from whether
to drain a local wetland for development, whether
to curb global fossil fuel consumption in order to
limit climate change, all depend on adequately valuing
ecosystem services.
|