J. Calculating The Value Of Natural Resources
The ecosystems of this planet, resulting from the many different combinations of populations of species, constitute the biological diversity of earth that is our life support.
Like never before, these services are in great danger of disruption. Society in general has had, so far, little appreciation of the volume, since many of them are what might be called intangible. Economists and ecologists for the first time are starting to work together, and have made attempts in economic terms to value such services. Global estimations put the volume of these services at several times the total economies of all nations.
These calculations are of very limited impact when they do not refer to concrete tangible examples. One of these examples refers to the provision of drinking water for New York City. Sewage and agricultural run-off seriously impaired the quality of the drinking water by seriously damaging the watershed supplying this resource for the city. Gejunisky has very recently calculated and compared the costs of either purchasing and restoring the water shed against the cost of building and maintaining a system of water purification plant. The acquisition and the situation of the watershed represented a cost of $1 million versus $6 to $8 billion that had to be invested just to build the plant, with costs of about $300 million a year to run the plant. Obviously, the choice in that sense is quite clear. As he mentioned in the story, it's not only the saving of $6 to $7 billion but it's also the many other services that you acquire by restoring the watershed. Instead of investing in a physical plant, you're really investing in your natural capital in a much more interesting and intelligent way. I understand that now that program is going public, selling shares and going ahead.
Extrapolations of these examples toward the needs of drinking water to ever increasing global populations, give a much more realistic and appreciated evaluation of the magnitude of just one of the services provided by diverse ecosystems. The world's drinking water is a fixed stock and since 1940 global water withdrawals have risen by an average 2.5% per year which is much faster than the rate of population growth. That will keep growing in the years to come (U.N. Critical trends, 1997).
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