Environmental Valuation Goes Mainstream

I'm always looking for examples I can use to answer the question "What is it you do anyway?" 

From Reuters:

Costs of safeguarding the world's fast-disappearing coral reefs and mangroves are small compared to the benefits they provide from tourism to fisheries, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said on Tuesday.

The report, part of a recent trend trying to place a value on the natural world, said that pollution, global warming and expanding human settlements along coasts were among mounting threats to reefs and mangroves.

The report, to be issued at a conference in Paris, estimated that intact coral reefs were worth $100,000-$600,000 per sq km (0.3861 sq mile) a year to humankind and a sq km of mangroves $200,000-$900,000 a year.

"Most benefits from coral reefs and mangroves arise from fisheries, timber and fuelwood, tourism and shore protection," it said.

Corals and mangroves protect coastlines from erosion caused by storms, for instance. The report said it was unclear, however, if they had shielded Indian Ocean coasts overall from the disastrous tsunami on December 26, 2004.

By contrast, the cost of protecting a sq km of coral reef or mangroves in a marine park was just $775 a year, it reckoned.

And then they have to go and burst my bubble...

It said that all estimates were based on vague data and had to be treated with caution but indicated that better protection made sense in a little-tested branch of ecosystem economics.

Comments

[Tim Haab]

I just realized in reading this post again that I may have made it sound like I had something to do with the coral reef valuation project. I had nothing to do with it. I just wanted to point it out as an example of environmental valuation.

[John Whitehead]

"ecosystem economics" Jeez, the fields of environmental, natural resource, and ecological economics just don't quite describe it?

[Biopolitical]

Based on your excerpt it looks like the report is missing many of the costs of preserving mangroves and coral reefs. The costs of preservation include not only "safeguarding" but also the opportunity costs of settling people away from the seashore and of reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. I would be very happy if accounting for all those costs would still leave the preservation of every inch of coral reef and mangrove as the optimal solution, but I would also be very surprised.