August 9, 2002

• Here’s some good news:
  
  

  Nature ‘pays biggest dividends’
  
  The cash return from conserving wild places is far higher than the gains made from developing them, researchers say.
  
  They estimate humanity loses about $250bn through the loss of the habitat destroyed in a single year.
  
  That loss occurs in the year the destruction happens, and in every subsequent year, they say.
  
  They put the benefit-cost ratio at more than 100 to 1 in favour of conservation.
  
  The researchers, from the US and the UK, report their findings in the journal Science. Their work was sponsored by the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the UK Government.
  
  The authors say an ecosystem’s economic value can be measured in terms of the goods and services it provides – climate regulation, for example, water filtration, soil formation, and sustainably harvested plants and animals.
  
  [..]
  
  Another author, Professor Robert Costanza, of the University of Vermont, US, said: “Enron and other companies got into trouble through bad accounting.
  
  “We’ve been doing exactly the same on the global scale, counting the destruction of nature as revenue.”

  
  I’ve been making this argument for quite some time.
  
  Natural resources are the only real capital there is; it’s the source of all wealth. Having an economy without accounting for nature is like having matter without accounting for atoms.

  • 8:57 am
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