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Authors: Paul Gilding
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orangutans, and whalesâand to the future, as in their childrenâs children.
This natural cultural tendency has been caught in a self-reinforcing loop with what works for advocates of change. At Greenpeace we were acutely aware that our membership was more responsive to the need to âsave the environmentâ when it was positioned as saving whales, especially if they were being killed by foreigners a long way away. In the 1990s, asking them to give up their cars was rather less popular than asking for $50 to stop foreigners from butchering whales!
All this is interesting historically but unfortunately is no longer relevant. As articulated by studies into the economic linkages to ecosystem breakdown and resource constraint, the economic impacts will be dramatic and have direct global and personal impact.
On the global scale, studies like that by Sir Nicholas Stern have put numbers on this impact in just the narrow case of climate change. In Sternâs study, he concluded that unchecked climate change could lead to a 20 percent decline in gross domestic product (GDP), an estimate that appears increasingly conservative as the science progresses.
The economic implications arenât just about the direct costs of systems failing. We also need to consider the costs of creating the required alternative economic infrastructure. These costs are often put forward as a reason for delay. In fact the opposite is the case, because Mother Nature doesnât wait for us to get around to it, so the impacts keep marching on and therefore the response becomes more expensive. Again taking the example of climate change, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has concluded that every year of delay on climate change increases the cost of building the new energy infrastructure required because the necessary rate of reduction gets steeper and steeper, stranding capital assets. They estimate every year of delay means we will pay an extra $500 billion. 12
The system complexity of the economic impacts of ecosystem degradation is considerable, however, explaining further why itâs hard for us to incorporate it into decision making.
This complexity is brought to the fore in studies like the Stockholm Resilience Centreâs report into planetary boundaries. Their innovative approach was to identify key natural systems that were critical to human civilization as it has developed and thrived. Where possible, they then defined absolute limits to changes in those systems, limits that could not be crossed without endangering our prosperity and stability. The results were summarized in the scientific journal Nature . 13 The study identified nine such boundaries and found that we had already crossed three of themâclimate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen levelsâand were approaching several others.
The study provides numerous examples of the interlinkages between ecosystem health and economic prosperity. For example, it showed how our efforts to increase agricultural productivity have led to us dramatically exceeding the earthâs capacity to absorb our emissions of nitrogen.
Nutrients in the form of nitrogen are added to the land as fertilizer to boost crop production. However, when they are washed into the oceans, they have the opposite effect, as they encourage algal blooms and deplete oxygen levels to the point where nothing else can survive. So while in this case significant economic benefit comes from higher food productivity, significant economic loss comes from loss of drinking water, loss of fisheries, and dead rivers. It was estimated that the total economic losses from freshwater eutrophication in the United States was $2.2 billion in 2009 alone. 14
Other studies have put a number on the total value of all ecosystem services to the economy. The most comprehensive attempt to do so was published in Nature in 1997 and has been cited thousands of times subsequently. 15 Based upon a thorough literature
This natural cultural tendency has been caught in a self-reinforcing loop with what works for advocates of change. At Greenpeace we were acutely aware that our membership was more responsive to the need to âsave the environmentâ when it was positioned as saving whales, especially if they were being killed by foreigners a long way away. In the 1990s, asking them to give up their cars was rather less popular than asking for $50 to stop foreigners from butchering whales!
All this is interesting historically but unfortunately is no longer relevant. As articulated by studies into the economic linkages to ecosystem breakdown and resource constraint, the economic impacts will be dramatic and have direct global and personal impact.
On the global scale, studies like that by Sir Nicholas Stern have put numbers on this impact in just the narrow case of climate change. In Sternâs study, he concluded that unchecked climate change could lead to a 20 percent decline in gross domestic product (GDP), an estimate that appears increasingly conservative as the science progresses.
The economic implications arenât just about the direct costs of systems failing. We also need to consider the costs of creating the required alternative economic infrastructure. These costs are often put forward as a reason for delay. In fact the opposite is the case, because Mother Nature doesnât wait for us to get around to it, so the impacts keep marching on and therefore the response becomes more expensive. Again taking the example of climate change, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has concluded that every year of delay on climate change increases the cost of building the new energy infrastructure required because the necessary rate of reduction gets steeper and steeper, stranding capital assets. They estimate every year of delay means we will pay an extra $500 billion. 12
The system complexity of the economic impacts of ecosystem degradation is considerable, however, explaining further why itâs hard for us to incorporate it into decision making.
This complexity is brought to the fore in studies like the Stockholm Resilience Centreâs report into planetary boundaries. Their innovative approach was to identify key natural systems that were critical to human civilization as it has developed and thrived. Where possible, they then defined absolute limits to changes in those systems, limits that could not be crossed without endangering our prosperity and stability. The results were summarized in the scientific journal Nature . 13 The study identified nine such boundaries and found that we had already crossed three of themâclimate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen levelsâand were approaching several others.
The study provides numerous examples of the interlinkages between ecosystem health and economic prosperity. For example, it showed how our efforts to increase agricultural productivity have led to us dramatically exceeding the earthâs capacity to absorb our emissions of nitrogen.
Nutrients in the form of nitrogen are added to the land as fertilizer to boost crop production. However, when they are washed into the oceans, they have the opposite effect, as they encourage algal blooms and deplete oxygen levels to the point where nothing else can survive. So while in this case significant economic benefit comes from higher food productivity, significant economic loss comes from loss of drinking water, loss of fisheries, and dead rivers. It was estimated that the total economic losses from freshwater eutrophication in the United States was $2.2 billion in 2009 alone. 14
Other studies have put a number on the total value of all ecosystem services to the economy. The most comprehensive attempt to do so was published in Nature in 1997 and has been cited thousands of times subsequently. 15 Based upon a thorough literature
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