- Nature's services
"Nature's services" is an umbrella term for the ways in which
nature benefits humans, particularly those benefits that can be measured in economic terms.Robert Costanza and other theorists ofnatural capital conducted extensive economic analysis of nature's services to humanity in the 1990s. The economic contribution of seventeen ofthese was found to be approximately US$33 trillion per year, greater than the activities in the inter-human economy, which totaled about US$25 trillion. This was based on estimated costs of replacing the services nature provides, with equivalent services using methods wholly based on human infrastructure.This study has been widely cited in
natural capital ,value of Earth andvalue of life debates. It is a cornerstone ofhuman development theory andNatural Capitalism . It has also had broad influence on theories ofservice economy , which redefinecommodity markets andbrand name product sales strictly as services: for example, governments providingmeans of protection of the natural capital which automatically provides such services as:*
Erosion control
* Water filtering
*Pollination
* Gamehabitat
*Wildlife corridor
*Pest control Worldwatch Institute ,World Resources Institute ,Rocky Mountain Institute ,Greenpeace , and variousUnited Nations agencies, along with a few governments (including theUnited Kingdom andCanada ) are actively expanding the analysis, with an eye to producing UN standards for valuatingnatural capital . This is anticipated to have a major effect onmoney supply debates, as the creation of money by banks for purposes of fundingecosystem depletion has become a major global governance issue, of importance equivalent toland reform , developing nation debt andterrorism . In combination, these are thought by some theorists, includingThomas Homer-Dixon , to be closely related to ecological depletion and heightened competition for scarcenatural resources . If the nature's services analysis is valid, then humans also compete to protect thenatural capital which in turn provides them services they cannot pay forin a cash economy. Funding its depletion thus creates avicious cycle .However, this debate appears to have had little influence on
government policy or on WTO,IMF orG8 economic and trade policy. Theanti-globalization movement ,ecology movement ,peace movement , andconservation movement , and their political ally theGreen movement are increasingly vocal about the need to reflect the value of these services directly in real policy. Such an approach would, for example, mean not funding such projects as theThree Gorges Dam which directly deplete and disruptecoregions on a huge scale. This debate precedes economic analysis of the services, which was in part motivated by the observation that human instinct and economic analysisvery often yielded quite different impressions of the value of such ecosystems.One criticism of this analysis is that it is largely conducted by those who have some association with
Gaia philosophy andhuman development theory and one or more political movements seen to have an ideologicalbias in favor of a higher valuation for nature's services than would be implied by a more
neutral point of view. Accordingly, many of the debates now focus on metrics and indicators on which both advocates and detractors ofmonetary reform can agree. These are in general indistinguishable from debates aboutmeasuring well-being to determine what constitutes realeconomic development , that is, the amount of money required to live the same way, and other debates regarding thesocial welfare function and what constituteswealth .See also
*
Ecosystem Marketplace
*Ecosystem services
*Environmental good
*Existence value
*Experience Economy
*Forest farming
*ISO 14000
*Soil functions
*Value of Earth
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