![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/NatureEconomyCropped.png\")
<\/p>\n\t<\/p>\n
Research highlights how the services nature provides are waning as it is degraded.Marco Simonini\/REDA\/Universal Images Group\/Getty via Inside Climate News<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Inside Climate News<\/a> and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n In an era of rapid globalization, economic growth has come with trade-offs. To make room for urban development or fossil fuel extraction, countries often clear forests, pollute water and decimate wildlife populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, while nations and businesses build lucrative markets around these activities, destroying nature often comes at a cost\u2014literally. Natural resources underpin the global economy, from pollinators supporting agricultural supply chains to forests ensuring water quality and availability.\u00a0One estimate suggests<\/a>\u00a0that more than half of the world\u2019s gross domestic product is moderately or highly dependent on the environment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Research shows the services that nature provides are diminishing as we degrade it. Now, a growing number of economists and ecologists around the world are helping decisionmakers understand the full extent of the contributions to local and national economies made by plants, animals, or entire ecosystems\u2014and what\u2019s at risk financially if they are lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since time immemorial, humans have relied on natural resources like clean water, forests, and soil to prop up economies. As Stanford University ecologist Lisa Mandle put it to me bluntly, \u201cif there were no nature, there would be no economy.\u201d<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until fairly recently that experts formally started to catalogue the environment\u2019s financial contributions to society through an approach dubbed \u201cnatural capital accounting.\u201d In 2005, a report compiled by hundreds of scientists from around the world, which was called for by the United Nations, estimated that human activities had driven the decline of two-thirds of ecosystem services on Earth, including freshwater supply, climate-change mitigation, and disease control.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pollinators contribute\u00a0$800 billion in gross economic value\u00a0annually, including $34 billion in the United States.<\/p>\n Dubbed the \u201cMillennium Ecosystem Assessment,<\/a>\u201d the report also revealed how much was\u00a0not\u00a0known about the environment\u2019s financial contributions, finding that the costs of degrading nature were rarely tracked in local and national economic accounts. Since then, experts have scrambled to fill these gaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mandle is the co-executive director of\u00a0Natural Capital Alliance<\/a>, a Stanford-based collaboration of research institutions and nonprofits such as the Nature Conservancy working to help countries better understand their natural resource availability and how to balance those benefits with development. <\/p>\n For example, the group recently worked with the Colombian National Planning Department to calculate the economic value of the country\u2019s Upper Sin\u00fa Basin. Using input from locals and complex financial models, they found that ecosystems in the region\u00a0deliver around $100 million<\/a>\u00a0in benefits to hydropower production and the delivery of clean water to households and economic sectors\u2014nearly 2 percent of the region\u2019s GDP.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn many decisions, nature has been treated as essentially worthless or of negligible value when compared to other kinds of human activities,\u201d said Mandle. \u201cNatural capital accounting is an effort to correct that and to shine a light on the many different ways that nature and biodiversity supports human well-being and the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just governments using this type of data; businesses around the world are increasingly required to disclose the biodiversity risks of their operations,\u00a0the Financial Times reports<\/a>. At the same time, investors have shown more interest in companies that can show they are environmentally friendly, Viorel Popescu, an ecologist at Columbia University, told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n Large corporations are major contributors to biodiversity loss, but Popescu said they are also at \u201cthe forefront of being able to do something about it,\u201d and can often move at a faster pace than governments. With this in mind, Columbia University announced in September the creation of a master\u2019s program focusing on biodiversity data analytics. The idea is to help businesspeople understand the implications of corporate operations on nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been training ecologists to do ecology forever, and they don\u2019t always get into places where they can actually make decisions, unfortunately,\u201d said Popescu, who is the director of the program. He has been an ecologist for more than two decades and stressed that the new program is \u201ctrying to get people that don\u2019t have necessarily an ecology or a conservation background\u2026but are in the position of making a difference.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ecosystem accounting has revealed some staggering stats on nature\u2019s financial contributions. Pollinators contribute\u00a0$800 billion in gross economic value<\/a>\u00a0annually, including $34 billion in the United States. A\u00a0recent federal report<\/a>\u00a0found that US birders spent an estimated $108 billion related to their pursuits in 2022 alone, which is almost six times the total revenue generated by the National Football League that year. Mangrove forests prevent more than $65 billion in property damage around the world each year, according to a\u00a02020 study<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even a single species can bring in the big bucks: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u00a0estimates<\/a>\u00a0that the endangered North Atlantic right whale generated $2.3 billion in sales for the whale-watching industry and across the broader economy in 2008 alone. Conservation groups often use these analyses to make the case for protection of plants and wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo participate in the commodification and financialization of our Relatives is an affront to the Natural Laws.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts recognize that natural capital accounting has limitations, largely due to the diversity of ecosystems and what values different groups of people put on various services. Additionally, interactions across a single ecosystem can be incredibly complex, and \u201cit can be hard to tease out what the value is of an individual component, because its value is not just [that component], but it\u2019s how it interacts within this system to sustain life,\u201d Mandle said. The UN has a\u00a0framework to help countries track ecosystem services<\/a>, though much of these processes are case by case.\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent years, new markets have emerged to commodify nature-based solutions through the sale of carbon offsets or \u201cbiodiversity credits,\u201d which represent a measured unit of biodiversity protection that companies can purchase to support conservation. However, critics say the \u201cfinancialization of nature\u201d fails to recognize its intrinsic value, and could actually work against its protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOnly humans would have the audacity to assign \u2018financial value\u2019, in their colonial thought process ways, to the Sources of Life and the living beings that are our relatives,\u201d Casey Camp- Horinek, an elder of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma and chairwoman of the Indigenous Council of the Global Alliance of the Rights of Nature, said in\u00a0a statement on the group\u2019s website<\/a>. \u201cWe do not own anything that is called Nature, we are Nature, and to participate in the commodification and financialization of our Relatives is an affront to the Natural Laws and quite simply wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Popescu said he\u2019s \u201cconflicted\u201d about assigning financial values to ecosystem services. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m well aware that if we don\u2019t try to do that, you\u2019re not going to advance the conversation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Echoing this sentiment, Mandle said that while it\u2019s crucial to also consider the intangible values of nature, \u201cthere are some decisions that get made, you know, comparing numbers, lines on a spreadsheet, or weighing costs and benefits.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a \u201chead approach and a heart approach,\u201d she said. \u201cI think they work together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n