There are many arguments for protecting the environment—maintaining biodiversity, preserving habitat, conserving resources that may eventually benefit humans—but they are not always couched in terms of dollars and cents. The European Commission recently tried to quantify environmental damage, though, by estimating the cost in Euros that such damage does to the global economy.
Rather than total the losses—the costs of soil erosion, for example—the commission instead added up the “services” that healthy ecosystems provide: an in-balance environment basically controls erosion on its own, nutrients cycle through the ecosystem, plants are pollinated, and so on. By totaling the value of such services, the commission figured that, worldwide, we’re costing ourselves nearly $14 trillion Euros per year.
The examples included in the commission’s report are wide-ranging, and can be disputed. They include several instances of lost tourism revenues from, for instance, having fewer wolves (a big attraction) in Yellowstone or from the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, which brings in money from both tourism and fishing. Still, it’s an interesting way to look at the value of what, so often, many of us take for granted. Some people relate to money—and can understand gains and losses in economic terms—much more easily than they can visualize the workings of a healthy (or a damaged) ecosystem, and many people just don’t get sentimental about pandas. If this approach helps them see more value in environmental protection, it has a value of its own.
You can read more about the report at http://www.care2.com/greenliving/13-trillion-lost-from-environmental-damage.html#ixzz1Zq8kbtlu.