The Sustainable Development Challenge:
The Importance of Accounting for the Value of Nature
Abstract:
The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being.
Ecosystem services/nature’s have many contributions to people:
"Ecosystem services” or “nature’s contributions to people”
Human actions affect ecosystems and the benefits they provide
The benefits provided by nature often are not factored into important decisions that affect ecosystems
Distortions in decision-making damage the provision of benefits, making human society and the environment poorer
The focus of this talk is the The Natural Capital Project and InVEST, an open-source software tool to estimate 20+ ecosystem services. InVEST is a spatially-explicit, high-resolution model with process-based ecological production functions, and a global extent.
Examples:
Natural Capital Index (NCI)
Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP)
Economic Case for Nature: Global Earth-Economy Model
Bio:
My research focuses on issues at the intersection of ecology and economics and include the impacts of land use and land management on the provision and value of ecosystem services and natural capital, biodiversity conservation, sustainability, environmental regulation, renewable energy, and common property resources.
Summary:
Challenge:
We’re changing the planet deliberately and accidentally
Need to capture
Ecosystem services
Nature’s contribution to people
E.g. pollination, filtration, drought management/avoidance
If we can quantify nature as an asset, we can incorporate it into easily into our decisions
Ignoring nature’s value hurts us
Over past 50 years
Per-capita incomes have grown
Natural capital has shrunk
IPBES (global analysis of ecosystem services) documents damage to natural resources and the corresponding services
E.g. air quality, water quality
You get what you pay for and you don’t get what you don’t pay for
Current market incentives not enough to protect natural capital
Natural Capital project
Tracks how changes in policies and economic decisions affect natural systems/resources
E.g. how fertilizer prices and farming decisions affect water quality
Can make suggestions about alternate policies and economic decisions
Quantifies economic efficiency, equity, etc.
InVEST: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (20+ models)
Goal: national-scale indicators of sustainability of capital management
Value of sustainably providing various ecosystem services
146 countries (>10k km2 with sufficient data)
Quantification:
Monetary terms: agriculture crops, grazing land, timber
Non-monetary terms: biodiversity, clean air
Metrics
Money
Greenhouse gas emissions
Biodiversity: richness, endangered species, endemic species, rare ecoregions, forest intactness, etc.
Water quality
Management options
Sustainable land management
Restoration
Forestry
Grazing
Crop production: current, irrigation/rain, footprint
Data: biophysical, economic, map of land use and management
Find efficiency frontier for a country, recommend improvements to get from current state to frontier
Gross Ecosystem Product
Quantifies
Impact of ecosystems on well-being
Ecological interactions among regions (up/down-stream) and compensation for ecosystem service providers
Performance metric for government officials
Chinese government is backing the development of this measure, to be reported along-side GDP
GEP and GDP are complementary measures
GDP: Manufacturing, finance
Both: Agriculture, forestry and tourism
GEP: Flood protection, mental health, air/water purification
Steps:
Track biophysical stocks of capital
Translate into flows of eco goods
Price them
Aggregate
Analysis done as part of 5 year China Ecosystem Assessment
China has good data on this
InVEST used to quantify ecosystem goods and their flows
Services are priced based on how much money is lost if they’re not available or how much money it takes to replace them with technology
Same service may have different value depending on who benefits: flood control for Shanghai vs for small town
Others don’t: carbon sequestration
When aggregating need to be comprehensive but avoid double counting
E.g. Analysis of Qinghai province
Quantified many different ecosystem services
The economy had grown, so their value has grown a lot
Many other provinces use the ecosystem services provided by Qinghai
Global Earth-Economy Model
Combines a general equilibrium macro model (GTAP: Global Trade Analysis Project) with ecosystem services model (InVEST)
Econ model->change in lang use->InVEST changes ecosystem services->Econ model->loop
The resolution has to be fine-grained since some phenomena are local (e.g. pollinators travel <=30m)
Can evaluate alternative economic activities and how they interact with the ecosystem
Trade policy
Research and development
Land use
Adding climate change approx doubles impact of ecosystem-oriented policies
Audience for these predictions
National governments
Development banks (e.g. World Bank)
NGOs
Businesses
They can use help in
Data quality
Compute time for running models
Better models of ecosystem services
Linkages across different model types
Can help users of ecosystem services pay providers