"Save the Environment"
is no catchphrase
$250 billion per year lost
when natural habitats destroyed

© 2002 Wendy Dager

Every year, California's home-building industry puts up 140,000 new residences for its growing population. According to state housing officials, however, that's about 80,000 too few.

In March, 2002, the office of Governor Gray Davis issued a report saying California is projected to grow by 12 million people over the next 20 years.

According to the report, California must "plan better so that (it) can use land most efficiently to build quality places and preserve...important natural assets."

But these natural assets continue to dwindle as California's Department of Housing and Community Development asks for "more suburban housing, more infill housing, more ownership housing, more rental housing, more affordable housing, more senior housing and more family housing."

The need is certainly there, but at what cost?

A study published in the journal Science indicates that the conversion of wild ecosystems to homes or even cropland isn't worth the cost of destruction. And not just in terms of its effect on Mother Nature.

The research team that authored the study says that "a single year's habitat conversion costs the human enterprise, in net terms, on the order of $250 billion that year, and every year into the future."

While $250 billion itself is a staggering amount, the researchers also estimated that a network of global nature reserves would ensure the delivery of goods and services worth approximately $400 trillion more each year than the goods and services from their converted counterparts.

The authors of the study measured the economic value of each ecosystem in terms of the goods and services it provides, including climate regulation, water filtration, soil formation and sustainably harvested plants and animals.

Even the study's lead author, Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge Zoology Department, was surprised by the group's findings.

"The economics are absolutely stark," said Balmford. "We thought the numbers would favor conservation, but not by this much."

As an example, researchers cited a Canadian project that converted freshwater marshes into an agricultural area. Even though the conversion was profitable, the researchers estimated that the area would be worth 60 percent more if wetlands had been left intact, allowing for continued hunting, trapping and fishing.

Among the other areas they examined in the study were tropical forests; temperate and boreal forests; swamps, floodplains, lakes and rivers; grasslands, rangelands, deserts and trundra; seagrass and algal beds; and marine regions.

The marine category results were particularly shocking, showing a 36 percent decline in the abundance of marine fish, mammals, birds and reptiles over a 30-year period.

"People are hearing a message that nature is being eroded, but it takes a while to sink in," said Balmford. "One third of the world's wild nature has been lost since I was a child and first heard the word conservation. That's what keeps me awake at night."

Sources: For an interview with the authors of the study, visit Environmental News Network, http://ens-news.com/ens/aug2002/2002-08-09-07.asp. For the text of the study itself, vist Science magazine online, http://www.sciencemag.org. For the Governor's 21st Century Infrastructure Report, go to http://www.bth.ca.gov/.

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