Value now or Lose Earth's Ecosystems

Value now or Lose Earth's Ecosystems



 
May 2007 -   Climate change is not only altering 
weather patterns and causing sea levels to rise, it is also transforming 
ecosystem services that humans have always taken for granted, the World 
Resources Institute said today in a new report. 
An English forest absorbs carbon dioxide that would otherwise become a 
climate warming greenhouse gas. 
Economists usually treat natural assets such as clean drinking water, 
absorption of carbon dioxide, or the decomposition of wastes as if they 
have no value. Instead, they focus on a narrow set of economic indicators, 
such as gross domestic product, GDP, disposable income, and purchasing 
power parity. Many of nature's services are not included in national 
accounts and forecasts. 
"We must urgently expand the climate debate beyond reducing greenhouse 
gases to focus on how climate change is altering ecosystem services," said 
Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, WRI, this 
morning at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 
The occasion was the release of WRI's report, "Restoring Nature's Capital: 
An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services." 
"Lima in Peru, for example, is entirely dependent on water from glacial 
melt," Lash said. "The glaciers will be gone in 20 years. Their options 
range from energy intensive desalination to a pipeline to the Amazon River 
- also threatened by climate change. Such decisions have huge implications 
for people and ecosystems." 

Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, introduced the 
organization's new report, "Restoring Nature's Capital." 
The report presents the results of the earliest thinking about how to 
address the difficult realities and the enormous potential uncovered by 
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 
Launched in June 2001 and involving more than 1,300 scientists from 95 
countries, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is a study of how humans 
have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services affect 
human well-being - now and in the future. 
"In the last half of the 20th century," the assessment found, "humans 
changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable 
period of history, primarily to meet growing needs for food, fresh water, 
timber, fiber, and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely 
irreversible loss in the variety of life on Earth." 
Of the 24 ecosystems assessed, only four have shown improvement over the 
past 50 years. Fifteen are in serious decline, while five hang in the 
balance. 
"Restoring Nature's Capital" proposes an action agenda for business, 
governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation. 

Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Achim 
Steiner 
In his first major address to a U.S. audience since becoming executive 
director of the United Nations Environment Programme last summer, Achim 
Steiner told this morning's gathering, "The Millennium Assessment put the 
plight of the planet's ecosystems firmly on the world's radar - 15 of the 
24 ecosystem services are being degraded or used unsustainably." 
"It also gave the world a glimpse into the economic costs accruing from 
over-extracting this nature-based or natural capital," he said. 
Steiner also sees reasons to be optimistic, especially in the latest 
report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Friday 
in Bangkok. 
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the 
costs of acting to decarbonize our economies will be far less – some three 
percent of global GDP, and less if wider benefits are factored in – than 
the costs of inaction," Steiner pointed out. 
He says if the world can act on climate change, it can act on the equally 
important issue of ecosystems and the services they provide. 
"We have enough knowledge, market mechanisms, and creative fiscal 
incentives to make a start. We now need the courage and intelligence to 
act," Steiner said. 
The report's lead authors, WRI's Frances Irwin and Janet Ranganathan, have 
written a concise action agenda for ecosystem restoration. 
Develop and use information about ecosystem services 
Strengthen the rights of local people to use and manage ecosystem services 

Manage ecosystem services across multiple levels - local, regional, 
national, and international - and timeframes 
Improve accountability for decisions that affect ecosystem services 
Align economic and financial incentives with ecosystem stewardship 
The Indigenous Women's Biodiversity Network Meeting on Manukan Island, 
Malaysia in 2004 was an example of managing ecosystem services on an 
international level. 
Ranganathan said, "The way forward requires rewiring the institutions of 
governance - making new connections to understand and find solutions to 
solve the complex interlinked challenges of ecosystem degradation." 
"One thing is abundantly clear," Ranganathan said, "business as usual is 
no longer an option. 
"The time has come to stop operating Planet Earth Ltd. solely for the 
purpose of making a few shareholders rich in the short term," she said, 
"and instead manage it as a family trust fund, set up for the benefit of 
today's and tomorrow's children."    

       
      

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