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Governments are increasingly taking the economic value of nature into account in policy-making, with growing interest in results from a UN-backed analysis.
The Brazilian and Indian governments are among those keen to use findings from The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project.Continue reading the main story
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You cannot manage what you do not measure”
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Pavan Sukhdev Deutsche BankFinal results from the three-year study were unveiled here at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting.
Nature's services must be counted if they are to be valued, its leader said.Pavan Sukhdev, a Deutsche Bank capital markets expert who leads Teeb on secondment to the UN Environment Programme (Unep), said that if society did not properly account for services that nature provides, they would be lost.
In an earlier analysis, Teeb calculated that the economic value of services being lost - including water purification, pollination of crops and climate regulation - amounts to $2-5 trillion dollars per year, with the poor hardest hit.More here
The idea of a green economic future is one close to my heart. I live in a town surrounded by hills covered with green foliage, streams and walking tracks. Their condition has changed little in the last 50 years. More than anything else it reminds us that we depend on the living things around us to not only survive, but to enjoy a beautiful way of life. If you have never walked/tramped in the bush or forest, think about it. The life there is making oxygen that keeps us alive. It provides homes for many rare and interesting creatures, most of which are harmless to man. As e depend on them (consciously or not), they depend on us to safeguard these natural reserves on which our very lives depend. So the next time you see a subdivision being built or a road being laid out, remember what it may cost us in the long term!
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