What's It Worth?

By | March 30, 2005
8 Comments

A panel of international experts has published a detailed report showing that our lovely planet is rapidly going to hell without even providing the common courtesy of a handbasket: *

Humans are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and raising risks of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or “dead zones” in the seas, an international report said on Wednesday.

The study, by 1,360 experts in 95 nations, said a rising human population had polluted or over-exploited two thirds of the ecological systems on which life depends, ranging from clean air to fresh water, in the past 50 years.

“At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning,” said the 45-member board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

“Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted,” it said.

Well, I don’t see that we have any choice. The obvious answer is that we need to start exterminating humans until some of these things improve. Obviously, the humans who do the most damage will be the first to go. People who drill for oil. Fishermen. People who drive SUVs.

I drive a Jeep Liberty, but it’s only a V6. Obviously, we should first kill everybody who drives a V8 and then wait a few years to see if things don’t improve. But, hey, if they don’t — I’m definitely on the list.

Actually, the folks who put the report together don’t seem to have anything quite that extreme in mind. And they offer this interesting analysis:

A wetland in Canada was worth $6,000 a hectare (2.47 acres), as a habitat for animals and plants, a filter for pollution, a store for water and a site for human recreation, against $2,000 if converted to farmland, it said. A Thai mangrove was worth $1,000 a hectare against $200 as a shrimp farm.

Well now I’m starting to look at this thing from more of an entrepreneurial perspective. Look at the money that can be made buying out Canadian farmland and converting it to wetlands! And there’s an even better return for anyone who wants to start converting Thai shrimp farms to mangrove swamps.

I’m just not clear who’s going to be paying that money. And if there isn’t anyone willing to pay, what exactly does it mean to say that wetlands and mangrove swamps are “worth” that amount?

I have a feeling that the experts would argue that wetlands are worth the greater amount to the State, while farm land is worth the lesser amount to the farmer. So how exactly do the twain meet? I guess the trick is to buy up all the farmland (shrimp and otherwise) and sell it to the state!

Or maybe there’s some other way to realize that value. Something that I’m not thinking of.

Of course, if I go back to my original idea, the answer becomes obvious — kill the farmers.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg has some related thoughts.

*I have absolutely no idea what that means.

  • John F

    Well, there maybe a point in there.

    Just as polluting air and water can be controlled by establishing an artificial market by fines or tradeable emission rights, if a locality in a particular state is providing x amount of benefit, the best way to secure this could be either be states, or some sort of environmentalist subsciption fund, purchasing and maintaining on the lines of National Parks. Or paying the property owner a compensating rent for keeping it in a desired condition.

    Whether the experts judgement of relative values is accurate is another matter. But such payments, like pollution fines, bans and charges, are inevitably based on some sort of arbitrary standard, as far as I can see.

    Not having read the report, I wonder if they point how much environmental damage is produced by the combination of poverty and unaccountable government? Because either would likely make a system of compensation payments or regulations inoperative.

    As a bit of an environmentalist myself, I also wonder if those Greens who welcome this report realise that their “Green Dream” of a static “sustainable” society is likely to result in a zero-sum system – a planet of peasants – that is the surest recipe for environmental catastrophe imaginable.

  • Engineer-Poet

    I’m just not clear who’s going to be paying that money.

    It’s the money that’s has to be paid when those things are gone:  cutting down mangrove swamp eliminates spawning grounds for sea life, collapses valuable fishery; draining swamp cuts wildlife, increases flooding downstream causing economic losses and lowering property values, and allows excess nutrients and pollutants to flow into water requiring more and more expensive treatment before it is usable.

    For an example of the economic value of a standing forest, look at the people in the Phillipines who were made homeless or killed when lack of trees caused hillsides to come down on them during heavy rains.  Or ponder what a salmon run is worth in terms of nutrients brought from the ocean back up onto the continent, for free.

    For an example of the cost of natural “services” destroyed, it’s hard to get more explicit than this.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    John F wrote:

    As a bit of an environmentalist myself, I also wonder if those Greens who welcome this report realise that their “Green Dream” of a static “sustainable” society is likely to result in a zero-sum system – a planet of peasants – that is the surest recipe for environmental catastrophe imaginable.

    Of course, it would never really go that far. Even if the zero-growthers could achieve their dream in the West, the developing world is going to keep growing and using resources as driven by the market. Meanwhile, continued growth in the West stands the greatest chance of bringing us to cleaner and more efficient use of resources.

    Engineer Poet wrote:

    It’s the money that’s has to be paid when those things are gone: cutting down mangrove swamp eliminates spawning grounds for sea life, collapses valuable fishery; draining swamp cuts wildlife, increases flooding downstream causing economic losses and lowering property values, and allows excess nutrients and pollutants to flow into water requiring more and more expensive treatment before it is usable.

    Right. Declaring wetlands to have a certain economic value provides a rationale for protecting them and preventing any more from being turned to farms. So we can prevent further loss, but we can’t do anything with this valuation to reverse past harm unless we implement some massive buy-out and follow it up with converting farms back to wetlands.

    I was just trying to draw attention to that missing step.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    There actually is a program for turning farms back into wetlands. The problem is that the government is not willing to pay what the land could produce if commercially farmed.

    My extended family is actually looking into this program for some recently purchased land. We have no interest in commercial farming, we bought it for hunting, so it’s no sweat for us to commit to not farming the land (and having the government come out and dig ponds make other changes that would make it better for hunting anyway).

    We believe that we can get the government to fund a sizeable portion of the note.

  • http://ergosphere.blogspot.com Engineer-Poet

    Maybe buy-outs aren’t necessary.  Farmland is marginal as it is, and charging taxes for replacement of “ecosystem services removed” might force the re-conversion of land which isn’t yielding enough revenue to justify its continued cultivation and draining.

    This might work for other things too, like mountain-top removal mining.  Charging stiff siltation taxes might make it uneconomical.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    EP:

    I think that’s the strategy the Feds are employing with this program my family’s looking into. They’re not paying enough to get truly profitable farmers to consider re-converting.

    It’s those farmers on the ragged edge of profitability who would find this program attractive.

  • Engineer-Poet

    We don’t want to get the economically marginal farmland, though.  We want to get the ecologically important land, whatever use it’s been switched to.  Taxing land that’s been drained or otherwise developed according to the value of the services no longer performed would do more for the environment overall, and would prevent the unwise development of much more.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    EP:

    They don’t take just any piece of property for the program. My family is still working through the approval process which is designed, it seems, to make sure that the land they are putting federal dollars into will actually benefit the environment after it’s reconverted to wetlands.

    The land that farmers like to offer for this program is marginal, but the feds can be picky about what they accept.