True Accounting: Nature's Free Services

By Lois B. Robbins

The best things in life are free. That is, they used to be. Already, many ecological services we’ve taken for granted have a price tag:

• Many farmers now have to rent honey bees. Habitat loss, bee mites, and pesticides have wiped out many of the wild bee populations that pollinated $20 Billion worth of crops.
• The City of New York estimates that it would require eight billion dollars for a treatment system to replace the natural water purification provided by the Catskills, (in contrast to about $1.5 billion to protect and restore the Catskills watershed).
• Based on global climate models, the annual costs due to the damage caused by climate change is estimated at several hundred billion dollars by 2050.

What does pure water cost? How much is clean air? What is the cost of fertile soil? How much is a stable climate worth? A recent study in the journal Science estimated the cost of replicating the free services provided by the natural world at $30-$40 trillion per year.

These free ecosystem services are fast disappearing. According to David Suzuki, An estimated 60% of all earth’s ecosystem services – life-supporting free services, have been severely degraded and are in decline. These include: air and water purification, flood and drought mitigation, waste detoxification and decomposition, seed and nutrient dispersal, fishery regeneration, soil fertility, pest control, protection from ultraviolet rays, and the moderation of winds and waves, and temperature. Some have no engineering substitutes.

Can current market mechanisms be counted on to cover the cost of maintaining these free ecosystem services? It appears not. Ecological practices that have a negative impact on free natural services are encouraged by the tax code and perverse incentives. Prices for goods and services do not reflect their ecological costs. And, in today’s competitive economy, conservation and the protection of natural areas are severely underfunded.

One response to this growing awareness is the UN’s second Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report. David Suzuki explains: “Four years in the making, the project . . . brought together nearly 1,400 experts from 95 countries. Their goal was to conduct a global inventory of the state of our ecosystems, quantify the effect that human activities are having on them and make suggestions for the future.” To learn more, go to http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx.

Another response is called True Cost Pricing. True Cost Pricing recommends imposing green taxes on the degradation of Natural Capital and using the tax money to provide incentives for resource efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable materials. To find out more, go to http://www.conservationeconomy.net/content.cfm?PatternID.

A third response is happening at the grass-roots level, as landowners are donating their properties, or conservation easements on them, to conservancies such as the North Oakland Headwaters Land Conservancy. Others in this grass-roots movement are finding indirect ways of strengthening conservation, with their time, their money, and their influence.

Why wait until these free services are gone? Why not do all we can to preserve them while they’re still free?