Damage to Nature Now Causing Widespread "Natural" Disasters, Economic Hardship

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, February 11, 1997

DAMAGE TO NATURE NOW CAUSING WIDESPREAD "NATURAL" DISASTERS, ECONOMIC HARDSHIP

Janet Abramovitz, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

Short-term exploitation of the earth's natural resources -- from clear-cutting forests and wetland conversion to the overuse of pesticides -- is severely diminishing nature's capacity to provide a host of valuable economic services, reports the Worldwatch Institute in its annual State of the World report. The results can be seen in recent "natural" disasters such as January's West Coast floods and recent outbreaks of pests and diseases.

"In just a few centuries we have gone from living off nature's interest to depleting the natural capital that has accumulated over millions of years of evolution," said Janet Abramovitz, senior researcher and author of the State of the World 1997 chapter "Valuing Nature's Services." As a result, governments, businesses--and, ultimately, taxpayers--must pay for the services that nature can no longer provide."

Land clearing, pollution, and other activities are undermining natural services that are the building blocks of our economy. These include the pollination of crops, pest control, water supply, soil building and maintenance, flood control, wildlife habitat, and nutrient cycling.

"We are not seeing the full value of our forests because we are blinded by the quick profits from cutting the trees," said Abramovitz. "In fact, a forest's watershed protection value alone can exceed the worth of its timber. Beyond that, forest ecosystems provide habitat for birds and insects that pollinate crops and control pests. Their roots hold soil in place, reducing erosion and controlling the runoff of water. And by storing vast amounts of carbon, forests help stabilize the global climate.

Today's system of economic calculations, however, grossly underestimates the current and future value of nature, and thus provides incentives for its degradation, according to the report. When a forest is clear-cut, the loss of erosion and flood control services is not subtracted from the Gross Domestic Product. But, perversely, after the floods and landslides caused by clearcutting, the money spent rebuilding homes and roads is counted as a positive contribution to the economy.

"The recent floods and mudslides in the Western United States illustrate the harsh but inevitable consequences of destroying nature's services. Clearcut logging, and the extensive road networks carved through forests to aid logging, increase the incidence of landslides in that region by 1,000-15,000%," said Abramovitz. "Recent damage will cost insurance companies, homeowners, and taxpayers several billions of dollars, because logging removed the protective tree cover from the hills and rivers have been walled off from their floodplains."

It is, in fact, easy to show that maintaining the health of nature's services makes good economic sense. For example:

• New York City's rural watersheds filter and cleanse the water that serves 10 million people each day. Rather than spend $7 billion to build water treatment facilities, the city will pay just one-tenth of that amount to help upstream counties protect those watersheds around its drinking-water reservoirs.

• Restoration of just half of the upper Mississippi Basin's lost wetlands could control a flood of the magnitude of the 1993 disaster that cost $12-16 billion. This restoration would affect only 3% of the region's land, but could prevent a repeat of that catastrophe.

• When non-timber forest values such as fishing, gathering and selling locally-used products, and flood and erosion control are included in economic calculations with timber harvest, the numbers shows that the most profitable strategy -- in industrial and developing countries alike -- is to keep a forest standing. In Indonesia's Bintuni Bay, intact mangrove forests yield $4,800 per hectare, year after year, for a variety of goods and services, including timber. Managing for timber alone would yield only $3,600 per hectare for just a few years.

• "Minor" forest products have major value. The global trade in rattan -- a tropical forest vine that is woven into furniture -- is worth $2.7 billion each year and employs a half-million people in Asia alone. In Thailand, rattan exports are worth 80% of the legal timber exports.

• Once viewed as wastelands, wetlands are now recognized for their services of cleansing water, recycling nutrients, recharging aquifers, controlling floods and storms, as well as for supporting fish and wildlife. Some wetlands near cities have measured values of $40,000 per hectare for these services. Yet despite their demonstrated economic value, the United States and Europe have lost more than half of their wetlands, and Asia, 27 percent.

• Destroying coastal wetlands dramatically increases flood and storm damage and reduces coastal fish catches. In the United States alone, 70-95% of fisheries worth over $3 billion at dockside are dependent on these threatened coastal nurseries.

• The value of coastal mangrove ecosystems for flood control alone has been estimated at $300,000 per kilometer in Malaysia, which represents the cost of building rock walls to replace their services.

• In Bangladesh, a boom in frog leg exports in the 1970s and 1980s led to a steep decline in frog populations and a resulting increase in agricultural pests and water-borne diseases. By 1989, Bangladesh was spending three times as much on pesticides as it was earning from exporting frog legs. But within a year of banning the exports, frog populations (and their pest control services) rebounded and pesticide imports dropped 30- 40%.

• 80% of the world's crops, and one-third of U.S. agricultural output, depend on pollinators like bees, insects, bats, and birds, whose populations are in jeopardy. In the United States, more than half of honeybee colonies have been lost since World War II, most in the last 5 years. People generally think honey is the main product we get from bees, but in fact their pollination services are worth up to 100 times more than the value of their honey.

• Each wild blueberry bee pollinates 15-19 liters of blueberries in its life. Their value is so great that blueberry farmers call them "flying $50 bills."

• Many modern agricultural practices actually limit crop productivity by harming pollinators. Pesticides reduce cotton yields 20% by killing pollinators. Plowing disturbs bee nesting sites. Just one hectare of unplowed land provides enough nesting habitat for wild bees to pollinate 100 hectares of alfalfa.

• Crop improvements such as disease resistance and improved yields come from breeding with wild relatives of crop plants. Nature's crop genetic library has added an estimated $66 billion to the global economy.

• A long recognized service of nature is providing life-saving medications. From antibiotics and aspirin to new heart treatments, medicines from natural products save lives, heal sick people, and help fuel a $40 billion a year industry.

• Taxol, a promising treatment for ovarian and breast cancer, was discovered in the Pacific Yew tree of North America, a species long discarded as trash during timber harvesting.

"Nature has constructed a foundation of valuable services that support our economy," says Abramovitz. "We cannot continue to chip away at this foundation without dangerous and costly consequences. It's high time for political and business leaders around the globe to realize that safeguarding nature's services is in everyone's economic interest, and to act in that interest."

In the international arena, quickly implementing existing international agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, that aim to conserve and sustainably use nature's biological wealth, is essential. To date, 165 nations have ratified this landmark convention. Currently, the United States is one of only a handful of nations that has not yet ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Unfortunately, this week's International Panel on Forests, and a global forest convention being considered, may actually delay addressing forest loss under existing treaties. The world's forests and economies could ill afford such delay.

Charting an economically and environmentally sustainable course will also require using economic indicators that accurately measure and value nature's services and economic performance. From the system of national accounts to local environmental impact assessments, using more realistic indicators will provide a better way to decide how best to grow our economies, and sound economic incentives to preserve nature's services. "It's about time we see the full value of the forest and the trees."