Whose Money and Why?

A few things I have learned on the job:

1. One hectare (ha) is 10 000 m2 and the number of zeros is deceiving. It looks like 10 km squared but it's just a box 100 metres by 100 metres.
   
2. The administration costs for conserving a 2,792 ha mangrove forest is about US $100,000 ($36 per ha).
3. No wonder 13 million ha of forest are lost annually.

It would be oversimplifying things to say that to stop deforestation, 468 million dollars a year ($36/ha x 13 million ha) would be needed. But the point is that unless some new incentives appear, our forests are doomed. Guilt inducing appeals like this make people look away.

(Picture stolen from: Greenpeace)

But money makes the world go round. Yes, money catches peoples attention.

(Picture stolen from: moneymingle.com)

But whose money? And why would they pay to to help conservation? An emerging idea is Markets For Environmental Services (MES).

A tree can be sold for it's lumber, oil or fruits but the services it provides like absorbing carbon dioxide, preventing erosion or filtering water had no monetary value until MES came along.

What MES hopes to do is create a market to sell the services that ecosystems provide, mainly carbon sequestration, hydrological services, landscape beauty and biodiversity.

Carbon sequestration is a famous one. Trees take up carbon dioxide. The purchase of carbon credits are payment for that service. There are still a ton of complaints about carbon credits: an area can be deforested and then obtain carbon credits for reforestation, trees planted at higher latitudes catch more heat than is balanced by the carbon they capture, if people think they can negate their carbon output they will just pollute more etc. But one inarguable thing that carbon credits have introduced is a large pool of money and recognition of the value of trees for an environmental service they provide. In 2007, the carbon credit industry was worth US $63 billion.

Another example is the hydrological services of forested land. Forested land purifies and filters water, a service that bottling companies and water providers benefit from. With MES, they can pay to keep the watershed intact to reduce their costs.


(This is the Peru I signed up to see)

In the same way, biodiversity can be valued. From the insect pollinators to the plants that may hold the key to future medicines, the habitat provided for them by an ecosystem can be protected by MES. The economic valuation of bees is somewhere near US $300 billion because of our dependence on them to pollinate so many of our crops. And if some plant has new chemicals that may yield new medicines, you can be sure pharmaceutical companies will be stepping on each other to secure the rights to it.

I'm really just learning this as I go along and I have my doubts. I can't even grasp these huge denominations; billions of dollars and millions of hectares. I think the utility of MES other than providing a pool of money for conservation, is that MES creates a monetary framework for people to understand how much they rely on nature. And there is hope that along the way, the poor will reap the benefits of MES since they are the ones who live closest to the land.

(Pictures stolen from: Kristina)

At the same time, I don't know if this will yield the wanted results. It sets up all of nature to be centered around what we humans deem useful or not and how much we are willing to pay for it. I guess it's a little late to lament the fact that our environment is one that is already highly controlled by humans. But with this system, only species that humans deem profitable will be valued. A cheetah is worth how much tourists will pay to see it. That's not even close to true value. And what about lichen, or ugly plants?



Something is better than nothing I suppose. Maybe humans and nature are so closely linked that eventually it will become clear that everything nature has created has monetary value. But maybe we won't see it in time. Or maybe the power we have to accumulate things so far beyond our needs makes us incompatible with the rest of nature. There are a lot of maybes. I've got a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. Here's to hoping we can save worthless, beautiful things too.



What do you think? Am I boring you?