Nature Has a Price Tag; How Much Is It?

It's becoming increasingly popular for not only tree-hugging environmentalists to care about nature, but economists as well. At least, the smart ones. In 1997, one study estimated that nature provides an average of $33 trillion worth of services annually.

That study has not gone without controversy, but

From climate regulation to erosion control to the maintenance of water supplies, nature provides us with services and resources that we recognize, and perhaps even more that we don't. Healthy ecosystems ensure that water gets stored when and where it is naturally supposed to and that it goes through some kind of cleansing or filtration process. Healthy ecosystems are ones that cycle nutrients regularly, and in which soil gets formed as it is needed

What's so beautiful about nature is that it is so interconnected, it's hard to separate out the individual factors that keep it going. That makes it harder to quantify their value, but it also inspires admiration

Calculating nature's worth

A 2006 United Nations Environment Programme report valued coral reefs at $1 million per square kilometer in places like Indonesia and the Caribbean, where tourism is dependent upon them for their role in maintaining sandy beaches and attracting snorkelers and scuba divers. Reefs are also an important source of employment: most of the developing world's 30 million small-scale fishers, for example, are dependent on coral reefs

Mangroves are perhaps even more valuable

And then there's living, breathing, moving wildlife. Honeybees have been getting a lot of attention lately because they are on a drastic and mysterious decline. But it's not just honeybees: insects in general contribute at least $57 billion a year to the U.S. economy, according to the Xerces Society.

They serve irreplaceable roles of pollination, pest control by eating other insects, serving as food other wildlife, and the dung beetle alone is valued at $380 million, because it eats manure that would otherwise attract parasites that farmers would have to control. Without the dung beetle, farmers would also have to spend more on fertilizer (also meaning higher pollution levels) because the nutrients that dung beetles help to return to the soil would be lost. And who knows where those nutrients will end up instead, and what changes they'll incur when they get there...

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