Wide World Economics
In 1997 an international team of economists and environmental scientists tried to put a dollar amount on the value of all the ecosystem services our planet's green infrastructure provides.
According to their estimates the economic value of Nature's services to mankind was something on the order of
$33 trillion per annum. In other words 2x the combined GDP of all the world's economies at the time. Then the combined GDP was about
$18 trillion, in 2006 that figure was circa
$45 trillion and it is projected to be
$90 trillion by the year 2020.
Doubled GDP's have also at least doubled the demand for Ecosystem services. An estimate for 2006 Ecosystem Services bill would be about
$55 trillion. The resources bill is not factored into the the GPP Global Planetary Product because there is no definition of a GPP includes the upstream and downstream contributions by our naturallly ocurring Green Infrastructure.
Dubai World Under Construction
Planetary infrastructure or Ecosystem services if you will, can be defined as the flow of materials, energy and information from the biosphere that support life on the planetary surface.
These services are:
-regulation of the atmosphere and climate
-the purification and retention of fresh water
-the formation and renrichhment of the soil
-nutrient recycling
-the detoxification and recirculation of waste
-the pollination of crops
-production of lumber, fodder and biomass fuel
Extra load placed on our infrastructure has started causing ecological brownouts in some areas e.g. places where rivers run dry before the reach the sea. The
Yangtze and the
Rio Grande being two examples. Thats not good there are many other 'small' indications that Nature can't keep up with the demands placed on it.
To replace Ecosystem Services with 'Eco' Technology would be virtually impossible even if the technology existed. It would also be staggeringly expensive and beyond the capability of all current nations even if they combined their GDP's to do so.
Salt of the Earth
Ecological Economics makes the vital point that the value of ecosystems in relation to the services they provide is grossly undervalued. It also makes the point that greater dependence on technological substitutes often degrades and puts existing biospheres at risk bcause devaluation often leads to neglect or abuse.
Many Waters, Kaiteur Falls
Green infrastructure is finite. Thus the amount of load it carry is limited and overharvesting or overuse can cause collapse or decrease the carrying capacity of the ecosystem services and its ability to damp fluctuations in natural or organic cycles.
A self reinforcing degradation sequence could look like this: 'Green Infrastructure' availability falls> its value declines > causing a further fall in both availability & perceived value > it reaches a marginal value that is no-longer self sustaining > begeins a contraction and ultimately a collapse.
Necessitating replacement with a grossly expensive and perhaps less efficient technical infrastructure.
Example:
New York City's watershed in the Cathskill Mountains provided the city with abundant clean drinking water. Development and intensive farming caused pollution of the watershed by runoff and sewage until it fell below
EPA standards.
The city was faced with a choice a-build and operate a water filtration plant to replace the watershed at a capital cost of
$6-8 billion plus
$300 million a year in running costs or restore the watershed for about
$1 billion with low annual maintenance expenditures.
Catskills Watershed
Based on these numbers the city raised an environmental bond issue, restored the watershed and now has clean water and a recreational area for little extra costs. Score one for natural infrastructure.
This kind of infrastructure is both a great deal cheaper than new sewage plants, drains, dams and aqueducts but also creates additional habitats that encourage added bio-diversity.
Rule 7 as applied to Nature is that the more species that inhabit an ecosystem the more stable that ecosystem. A diverse and productive system is more robust and has a better chance to maintain a healthy dynamic equilibrium over the long-term than a depleted one.
Nature is not our friend and she doesn't love us and never has in spite of the personifications humanity has given her. Nature is an elaborate organized system which creates a planetary wide network of interlocking natural infrastructures. Call it Nature, GAIA or Ecosystem Services, LPC. it simply is and we can't do without it. We can neither or afford to replace it with less efficient technology, green or otherwise, nor do we have the money to do so even if we wanted to.
In comparison to Nature's efficiency our human creations look like
Rube Goldberg kludged together some leaky, creaky, creations that spout off green slime, brown sludge and glow in the dark lavender whorls. Good for a
Terry Gilliam movie but not good for the future.
So lets stick with the stuff that does the job cheaper, better and more efficiently. Calculate Nature's green infrastructure at its real economic value in the planetary economy.
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