– A question for Wal-Mart as it moves its sustainability push into the blogosphere.

– An activist hero incarcerated for his nonviolent civil disobedience discusses the seeds of resistance and the opportunities presented by a world in disrepair.

– Suggestions that we can dump alkaline chemicals into the oceans to prevent acidification seems dead in the water – it would cost trillions of dollars.

– E-mails describe fairly desperate financing ideas as Solyndra’s position worsened, including borrowing money at 12 percent interest.

– House Republicans are building an argument that the Department of Energy violated the law when it arranged a financial lifeline for Solyndra.

– E-mails provided to investigators show White House officials expressed concern that Solyndra might collapse months before it did.

– Tropical shrimp have a devastating impact on local communities in Bangladesh, leading to a boycott in Europe.

– Climate change could cost Canada around 1% of its GDP by 2050 in environmental damage.

TEEB Logo. Source: TEEBweb.org

One of the impediments facing sustainable ecological development is distrust among the parties involved. Scientists and environmental advocates have long resisted the idea of placing financial tags on ecosystems or species, fearing that pricing something as complicated as biodiversity or the beauty of nature would diminish its importance. For certain cultures, pricing the natural world is not just unsavory, it is inconceivable because they perceive the land as something that cannot be owned. On the other side of the matter, governments and businesses may associate environmental assessment with burdensome costs to themselves. Yet the parties involved commonly share the same goal of improving quality of life for human beings. Even fear of increased profits foregone is not necessarily motivated by greed. A nation may wish to increase its profits so that it can provide better facilities for its citizens. Environmental advocates also wish to see people being provided with life necessities and comforts. Differing opinions on how human happiness can be achieved creates dissent and competition, hindering progress in creating a balance between economic and environmental needs.

In order for scientists, citizens, NGOs, and governments to start working together, they will need to find a shared language. As the language of the market system, economic valuation can offer common communication that creates a bridge between different fields of work. For true environmental health to be supported, ethical matters will need to be considered as well, but the global market system is one of the primary drivers of environmental destruction, and, as a widely recognized value system, currency can create a common means of communication among nations as well as among different decision-making parties. If this is the case, ecological valuation can become a tool for environmental protection rather than a threat to it. Such is the belief of an international committee, founders of TEEB.

In 2010, a multi-national team of researchers released a synthesis of observations from The Economics and Ecosystems of Biodiversity, or TEEB. This synthesis outlines the study’s approach to environmental valuation, conclusions from the study’s previous work, and recommendations for how decision makers can use TEEB as an informative tool. TEEB’s study is an outgrowth of a 2007 G8+5 ² summit, and its purpose is to “show how economic concepts and tools can help equip society with the means to incorporate the values of nature into decision-making at all levels,” and thereby create a conversation between the science of biodiversity and policies of governments and businesses (3, TEEB 2010).

This goal, the writers acknowledge, will be difficult to achieve. In order for economic valuation of ecosystems and diversity to be effective, a shift in global understanding of their purpose must occur. The report states: “Ideally, TEEB will act as a catalyst to help accelerate the development of a new economy: one in which the values of natural capital, and the ecosystem services which this capital supplies, are fully reflected in the mainstream of public and private decision making” (3, TEEB 2010). Several motivators drive the need to mainstream environmentally sustainable practices.

Aerial view of Watsonville, California, and the agricultural areas surrounding the town. Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Another motivator for ecologically wise decision-making is preservation of services that ecosystems as a whole provide to local communities. For example, a forest may provide potential revenue as a supplier of capital in that the wood could be harvested and sold. But the forest may also be benefiting the local community in less visible ways. The presence of vegetation provides “climate control” helping to cool the surrounding areas, the trees’ root systems help hold the soil in place to prevent erosion and maintain water quality, and the variety of plants and animals that live in a forest ecosystem may provide food or other useful services to local inhabitants. The value of the wood is only a fraction of the value of the forest, and recognizing the services that forests provide as an intact ecosystem can help people living in the area and the government to better understand the implications of harvesting the forest solely for wood. Placing an economic value on these services helps put their purpose into a context that brings businesses and the market system into the discussion using their own language.

A third reason for a system of ecologic valuation is to reduce and prevent poverty. For a non-local business, an ecosystem and its components may only have economic value in one sense. They reap the benefits of developing or exploiting an ecosystem without having to incur the costs—loss of ecosystem services—that follow. Poorer households, especially those outside of urban development, are most likely to be negatively impacted by destruction of natural services because poorer households are most likely to be directly dependent on local natural services. The TEEB synthesis says that “ecosystem services and other non-market goods account for between 47% and 89% of [the total source of livelihood] for rural and forest-dwelling poor households” (15, TEEB 15). What this translates into is that when the natural services of an area are degraded, those who are least economically equipped to seek resources elsewhere are deprived of the main source of their livelihood. Creating values for these natural services would help to protect them from development or provide a measure of repercussion that could be used for business consideration when outlining the potential costs of a project.

Governments themselves also may benefit from more substantive ecologic valuation. Although undeveloped areas such as forests or wetlands come readily to mind when considering how ecological valuation could contribute to ecosystem stewardship, TEEB’s synthesis can be applied to city development, planning, and management. The synthesis reminds its readers, “The fast-moving, mechanized lifestyle of today’s urban cities presents an illusion of distance and disconnect from the natural world. Yet every activity in our towns and cities depends in some way on Earth’s ecosystems and their functions and imposes pressures upon them” (18).

Wetland restoration. Source: Elizabeth Jackson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Finally, a more accurate assessment of ecosystem biodiversity value could benefit businesses as well. TEEB’s synthesis outlines at length why current approaches are potentially unreliable, ineffective, or costly. By understanding the broader spectrum of costs encompassing a project, businesses can better plan for potential clean-up costs and have a more complete picture of the potential liabilities of their project.

Even while advocating ecological valuation, TEEB acknowledges the difficulty in determining those values. Humans have a limited understanding of how natural systems function, and the idea of placing a value on services provided by nature is relatively new. How to appropriately audit services like the prevention of erosion or benefits from a rare species of fish presents a type of assessment that is still being defined. Valuation is a complex and disputed process. However, as the synthesis states, “even approximate estimates of the value of ecosystem services can help lead to better resource management and policy, especially where the alternative assumption is that nature has zero (or infinite) value” (13, TEEB ). The last part of that statement is key. Economic valuation of nature does not fully address the roots of humanity’s often destructive relationship with the Earth. In order to create truly sustainable relationships with natural resources, we may need to reconsider the way we acknowledge importance and the underlying beliefs that shape our systems. In the meantime, an economic shift in perception of natural sources can help to preserve those sources while more complex shifts in perception occur.

TEEB’s vision is to help create “a society that recognizes, measures, manages and economically rewards responsible stewardship of its natural capital.” By listening to the needs and interests of others, each of us, no matter our background, can help to shape the conversation about finance so that valuation becomes an effective tool for sustainable market growth. Fine examples already exist of how ecological valuation has led to successful projects, but the environmental concerns facing us are so large in scale that to address them collaboration and rewards for responsible behavior need to become the global market standard, not the applauded exception. TEEB’s synthesis offers a starting point for those discussions.

TEEB (2010) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature: A Synthesis of the approach, conclusions and recommendations of TEEB.

Thompson, I., Mackey, B., McNulty, S., Mosseler, A. (2009). Forest Resilience, Biodiversity, and Climate Change. A synthesis of the biodiversity/resilience/stability relationship in forest ecosystems. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal. Technical Series no. 43, 67 pages.

¹ Even determining what “global human prosperity” means differs among cultures and individuals. Here, it is intended to mean meeting the basic physical needs of all peoples: food, water, shelter, and healthful ecosystems.
² G8+5 includes officials from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa.

– For less than the price of a small Manhattan apartment, you can own an entire town in South Dakota.