Archive for the ‘conservation’ tag
The economics of ecosystems
Greeninc yesterday published a link to this piece in the Christian Science Monitor which reported that the United Nations Environment Program released The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report:
As a result of this oversight, living systems are all too often liquidated when, in reality, preserving them would bring more economic benefit.
A forest gets clear-cut, for example, because standard economics accounts only for its value as wood pulp. The forest’s storage of carbon, its water filtration, and biodiversity preservation are ignored.
The Christian Science Monitor says that there are those who disagree with this fully monetized approach to ecological issues; that there are moral and aesthetic and various other reasons to preserve biodiversity. I’d argue that it’s a very important arrow in the quiver of those of us who understand the risks of our present course of wanton ecological destruction. Market economies understand only the language of the bottom line, and the bottom line is that it makes economic sense to preserve the wild.