News Room

Measuring the priceless in dollars and cents

BY KIM DAVIS, THE VANCOUVER SUN

By simply tapping their nimble fingers on a number pad, those master navigators of spreadsheets and ledgers can sooth taxed ears with the sweet sound of “refund” or strike fear into the bravest with the whisper of “audit.”.

While brilliant scientists, sharp journalists, progressive politicians and passionate activists take the stage and inspire people to protect and change the world, Jonathan Watts of The Guardian suggests it is with accountants, those quiet masters of number-crunching, that the fate of the world may lie.

The old and often-used adage — “it all comes down to money” — is a frustrating and harsh reality thrown in the face of many environmental efforts. One the key reasons is that many of the world’s natural resources and services are taken largely for granted. For example, consider how many Canadians truly appreciate, let alone financially recognize, the abundance of fresh air and clean water Canada affords them. Around the world, the destruction of lakes, grasslands, forests, mountains and wildlife rarely appear on corporate or government balance sheets.

“Eco-accounting” is not a new concept, but its implementation has been slow and difficult. For decades, environmentalists have struggled with the challenges of measuring the value of nature. However, this is starting to change. An increasing number of assessment tools, including carbon sequestration and water-cycle regulation, have become available to help eco bean counters better quantify “natural capital” and the economic implications of losing ecosystems. “It feels as if biodiversity is now attracting as many financial money men as nature lovers,” Watts writes.

A lot of beans

According to a study released last year by the David Suzuki Foundation and Pacific Parklands Foundation, the economic value of ecosystem services in B.C.’s Lower Mainland — forests, fields, wetlands, watersheds and others — is far from loose pocket change, amounting to $5.4 billion a year, or about $2,462 per person. The first valuation of ecosystem services in B.C.’s Lower Mainland, the study estimates values for a variety of benefits provided by nature, including the filtering of air and water, the combating of climate change through the absorption and storage of carbon dioxide, and the protection residents from storms and floods.

Ecosystems that demonstrated the highest values were wetlands ($4,000 to $6,000 per hectare) and forests ($5,900 to $7,400 per hectare), and the greatest economic benefits were in climate regulation ($1.7 billion per year), water supply ($1.6 billion) and flood protection and water regulation ($1.2 billion). According to the study, more than 1,300 hectares of rare wetlands, with an estimated loss of more than $11 million in annual ecosystem services, has occurred in the last two decades, mostly through urban development.

On a global scale, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study, a UN initiative designed to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity and highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, has estimated the global impact of biodiversity at between $2 trillion and $4.5 trillion annually, up to 7.5 per cent of the global GDP.

Tree cents

Natural capital is not limited to wild landscapes, either. Consider, for a moment, the value of urban trees. How much of a contribution do they make to cityscapes, and how can we calculate that?

A freely available software program called i-Tree is helping to do just that. Created by the United States Forest Service, the program uses cost-benefit calculations to pinpoint and quantify the contribution trees make in urban environments.

With so many things competing for attention in urban settings — buildings, signs, traffic — trees too often fade into the hard landscape, or worse, are viewed as a nuisance. Their root structures impact city infrastructure or their overhanging branches wreak havoc in a variety of ways.

In the latest suite, i-Tree v3.0, there are five applications: two analysis tools and three assessment programs, which can be used to understand the contribution made by a single tree, or a forest.

According to Gizmag, an online publication that covers new and emerging technologies, the program has already been used by numerous communities, non-profit organizations, consultants, students and volunteers. The New York City parks department used i-Tree to determine that its nearly 600,000 street trees provide an annual benefit of $122 million US, five times the amount invested in caring for them every year.

Understandably, for those who value the natural world regardless of its economic benefits, the idea of ecological accounting and biological assets may be rather distasteful. And as Watts points out, there is the valid concern that if done badly, it could mean the natural world is “further commodified, priced, sliced and sold to the highest bidder.” But if done well, he writes, the potential consequences of eco-accounting initiatives could be enormous: they could reset human values and perhaps even transform capitalism. Money may not grow on trees, but until nature is in our ledgers, we will only continue to run into the red.