A group of U.S. and U.K. researchers recently published a study in Science making claiming that conserving wild places is 100 times more profitable than developing them. How did they arrive at these conclusions? Easy — they made them up.
On the face of it, the claim is absurd. Humanity’s ability to manipulate and alter its environment has been responsible for all human progress. Those parts of the world that are the most developed are also the wealthiest and have the best measurable outcomes on factors such as life expectancy or infant mortality, while areas where development has been minimal suffer in poverty, disease and relatively horrific outcomes on life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures.
Here’s how the BBC describes how the researchers reached their odd conclusion that pristine nature is more valuable than human development (emphasis added),
The authors say an ecosystem’s economic value can be measured in terms of the goods and services it provides — climate regulation, for example, water filtration, soil formation, and sustainably harvested plants and animals.
Pricing them is difficult, since many of the goods and services are not bought and sold in the conventional economy.
So economists assign values to these “non-marketed services” in different ways, perhaps according to the cost of replacing them or assessing how much people would be willing to pay for them.
In other words, they make up the values. How much is climate regulation worth? Whatever you want it to be.
According to the study authors, half of the total value of an ecosystem is lost when it is developed, which begs the question as to why some of the most developed places in the world such as New York City or Hong Kong are not mired in poverty rather than among two of the wealthiest cities in world history.
Source:
Nature ‘pays biggest dividends’. The BBC, August 8, 2002.