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ECOSYSTEM MEETS ECONOMICS
By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence
The resources in nature are often taken for granted- the air we breathe, the water we use, the plants we harvest etc. These resources should be considered in the same way economists regard goods and services, says Stanford ecologist Gretchen Daily. The goods and services provided by natural ecosystems each year are worth many trillions of dollars in conventional economic terms, and the prosperity of all societies hinges upon safeguarding them. Failure to appreciate these resources could have disastrous consequences, she said. "Nature's services are the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems support and fulfill human life," Daily said. These services are the life support functions normally performed by ecosystems, such as purification of air and water; detoxification and recycling of wastes; generation and maintenance of soil fertility; pollination of crops and other plants; regulation of climate; and mitigation of weather extremes like flood or drought. The harvest and trade of goods such as seafood and timber represent another important component of the human economy. Ecosystems also perform the key job of supporting the vast diversity of life, the species that are sources of key ingredients of our agricultural, pharmaceutical and industrial enterprises, she emphasized, adding: "Humanity came into being after most of these services had been in operation for hundreds of millions to billions of years," said Daily. "They are so fundamental as to make them both easy to take for granted and hard to imagine disrupting beyond repair, as human activity threatens to do today." Daily is working to encourage collaboration among academic scientists and business leaders to develop workable and economically profitable ways of incorporating ecosystem service values into decision-making. "So far this effort has been very promising," she said. "Everyone has a stake in finding fair and efficient ways of achieving a balance in human activities so that Earth's life support systems are protected. The practical experience and expertise of leaders in the private sector is crucial to the success of this effort." Ecosystem services operate on such a grand scale and in such intricate and little-explored ways that most could not be replaced by technology, she said. "Ecosystem services are absolutely essential to civilization; they are priceless. Yet their lack of a price - they are typically not traded in economic markets - has contributed to a widespread lack of awareness of their very existence, and to a corresponding misimpression that the ecosystems that supply them lack value. " "Just as one cannot capture the full value of a human life in economic terms, it would be absurd to try to estimate the value of nature in strictly economic terms," Daily said. "But estimates of the lower-bound, marginal value of nature's goods and services - in the trillions of dollars - are critical to informing decision-makers." Daily is the editor of a new book, Nature's Services (Island Press, 1997), that synthesizes scientific understanding of how these services are provided, how much they are being disrupted by human activities, and how important they are to society. The book is written to be accessible to a lay audience and features contributions from more than 30 distinguished economists and natural scientists. Noted Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich also spoke at the conference, citing many examples of what happens when natural resources are taken for granted. For example, this winter's disastrous mudslides in Washington and Oregon were partly traceable to overharvesting of timber, which disrupted the natural flood controls that forests exercise over flows of water. The mudslides are a reminder that ecosystem services - the "utilities" that natural systems provide free of charge, can be lost at great cost to local and global economies. he noted. "The loss of nature's services is not some hypothetical future disaster, or something restricted to poverty-stricken regions of the world. Interference with nature's services comes home to the rich in higher fish prices and loss of sport fisheries; loss of real estate values; higher risks from 'natural disasters' like floods, droughts and possibly other extreme weather events," Ehrlich said. When ecosystems are disrupted, affluent North Americans suffer outbreaks of agricultural pests; diseases such as Lyme disease and giardia; acidification and decline of precious forests; and rapid siltation of reservoirs, threatening the sustainability of irrigation and power generation. "Expansion of the human enterprise is seriously damaging the natural systems that provide the services that underpin our economic security," Ehrlich said. The damage is a product of population growth, increased consumption of resources per person, and the cultural, institutional and technical means through which each unit of consumption is supplied. "Yet a flood of lies and misinformation is being generated by anti-environmental forces that helps keep that fact from decision makers and from the general public," he said. Ehrlich coined the term "brownlash" to describe the efforts of those trying to confuse the public about the findings of environmental science. Brownlashers (whose ideas are a backlash against the "green" findings of the scientific community) make a wide variety of claims that he calls "preposterous." These include assertions that the ozone hole is a hoax, that concern about global warming is unwarranted, that there is no extinction crisis and, most outlandish of all, that continued human population growth can be supported for 7 billion years. "Those claims are diametrically opposed to the scientific consensus," he said. "Those generating the brownlash are willing to risk nature's crucial services to continue on a business-as-usual course - a course that may be congenial to their personal financial interests. Nature's services are supplied free of charge by ecosystems, in which biodiversity - populations of plants, animals and microbes- are vital working parts. The trees, shrubs and herbs growing on a Washington State hillside, for example, not only help to control erosion and flooding, but they also are involved in maintaining the balance of gases in the atmosphere, cleaning the air and recycling wastes. "That's why scientists are so concerned with the mass extinction of populations and species now under way," Ehrlich said. "A balance between human activities and safeguards for the natural systems that provide economic prosperity is essential to human health, happiness and survival." Humanity is causing widespread losses of biodiversity through destruction and alteration of habitats, transporting organisms to new locations, and overharvesting living resources such as fishes, Ehrlich said. "Loss of biodiversity is the most irreversible of the kinds of damage Homo sapiens is inflicting on its environment." Releasing enormous quantities of toxic substances, failing to conserve soils, overexploiting non-living resources such as groundwater, and modifying large-scale biophysical processes (especially altering climates, thinning the ozone shield and disrupting biogeochemical cycles) also add greatly to the assault that Homo sapiens is mounting on its own life-support systems, he said. He pointed out that humanity causes the extinction of at least one species and thousands of populations of other organisms every day. At the same time humans are using up goods that crippled ecosystems will be unable to replenish, for example by causing the annual loss of some 25 billion tons of soil, and overpumping the southern part of the Ogallala aquifer at roughly 100 times its recharge rate. "We are busily sawing off the limb on which we are perched - yet that is never mentioned in the brownlash literature that attempts to persuade people that environmental problems are relatively minor or nonexistent," Ehrlich said. Ehrlich outlined measures that would help preserve those systems by reducing the scale of human activities:
"Most important of all, more equitable social, economic and political arrangements should be sought to allow the implementation of these goals, "he said. "Everyone can help, first by learning how our life-support systems work, then by becoming politically involved and pushing leaders in the right direction, and always by fighting the racism, sexism, religious prejudice and gross economic inequity that make it so difficult to preserve and restore the natural services upon which humanity depends. "To provide a reasonable chance of averting disaster, much more effort will be required of natural and social scientists to find paths to sustainability," Ehrlich stressed. "Scientists must also put more effort into countering the brownlash. It now threatens seriously to retard progress toward protecting nature's services and thus menaces our grandchildren and the future of our species."
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Seattle,
WA (2/16/97) The green science of ecology met the dark science of economics
as leading thinkers met to discuss complex issues of human industry and
planetary resources at a symposium on "Ecosystem Services" at
the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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