It was 1997 when Robert Costanza, ecologist, architect and professor of Public Policy at the Australian National University, published a paper that became one of the most cited works in the history of ecology. Fonte:Costanza Costanza, with his colleagues, quantified the economic value of Nature and of the services provided by our planet’s system. The result was the astonishing figure of $33 trillion (1012) per year as the minimum estimate of the economic worth of Nature – compare that to a global GDP of about $19 trillion. This shocking result forced many governments to admit that natural ecosystems were far more important to human survival than conventional economics had predicted. Making the value of Nature explicit is something quite radical, and yet this is having a lot of success in democratic countries. Giving Nature an economic worth is beginning to constitute a new model of thinking. For too long we have ignored the fact that the money one can make from felling a forest is less than the value it contributes by keeping it alive.
Making the value of Nature explicit is something quite radical, and yet this is having a lot of success in democratic countries.”
Environmental impacts, in an economic context, are generically defined as “externalities”, because they are excluded from the evaluation in a decision-making process. The result is that Nature’s net worth is zero. What are the consequences of such thinking? Let us consider the case of China for a moment.
In 1997 the Yellow River (once considered the cradle of Chinese civilization) dried out for 9 consecutive months over a 700 km long stretch, causing huge economic damage. Only a year later the Blue River (the 3rd longest river in the world) flooded, causing the death of about 4000 people, loss of property for 250 million people, and about 20 billion dollars in damage. What did happen to Chinese rivers in those years? A study by the international initiative TEEB Fonte:Suk (‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’) revealed that the caused of these alterations in fluvial regimes was prolonged and massive deforestation, driven largely by the need to produce wood for construction. Why did China cut down an area of forest twice the size of Spain, without foreseeing the damage that this would cause?
China acted like all those countries chasing rapid economic growth: deforestation rapidly generates high economic returns. However, the calculation had a major flaw. It only considered what the wood was worth on the market and did not take into account the environmental cost of production. The bill arrived, inevitably, and with the interests, from 1997 onwards. If the environmental costs of wood production had been taken into account, they would have seen that the “cost” of production is twice the selling price (1 m3 of wood can be sold for $55, but that 1 m3 costs the environment $100 ). When China began to assess the environmental costs of deforestation, it changed its forestry policies and drastically reduced logging, which in turn increased the selling price of wood, and reflecting more realistically the true cost.
Giving a monetary value to natural systems and natural processes is something which is strongly debated, as always happens in the world of science. Putting a price tag on something traditionally considered to be priceless has been seen as a negative thing. Isn’t Nature already worth it in itself? Shouldn’t it be exempt from evaluation, because its value is infinite?
Putting a price tag on something traditionally considered to be priceless has been seen as a negative thing.”
Let’s just reflect on this point: giving a value to something is inevitable. The difference lies in whether or not we make such evaluation explicit. To say that nature is priceless is an evaluation in its own right. The difference lies in making this valuation explicit. If a company chooses to build a residence on a coastal area, forever altering the fragile ecosystem of the sand dunes, supplanting animal and plant species and polluting the waters, it has assessed that such construction is more important than anything else. Making the value of Nature explicit and assigning it an economic value allows it to be visible and to be considered during the decision-making processes. Remember China’s trees?
Making the value of Nature explicit and assigning it an economic value allows it to be visible and to be considered during the decision-making processes.”
However, an economic value is not the only way to evaluate something. There are also other factors, such as ecological or cultural values. Since Costanza’s work in 1997, valuation methodologies have become increasingly sophisticated and the theoretical frameworks underlying such valuations have evolved dramatically. Today, it is commonly accepted that multiple valuation analyses are the most accurate, because they manage to integrate environmental, societal and economic needs. So, to answer the question above, yes, it makes sense to acknowledge nature’s value, and to use all the languages we know to communicate it!
The Earth system is an intricate set of smaller sub-systems, which are linked together by mechanical, physical, chemical and biological processes constantly influencing each other, and this is all part of a complex and ever-variable dynamic. In short, it’s a chaotic mess that works. The human species, as well as other species existing on Earth, owes its existence to the conditions that are guaranteed by natural processes. Ecosystem services are those services (support, supply, regulatory and cultural services) provided to humans by nature. They express the fact that our survival is completely dependent on Nature.
The human species, as well as other species existing on Earth, owes its existence to the conditions that are guaranteed by natural processes.”
Perhaps the most tangible effort of this change of mentality is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: a project promoted by Kofi Annan in 2001 when he was still the Secretary of the United Nations, with contributions from 1360 scientists from different disciplines around the world. The MEA Fonte:MEA was the first report to evaluate the health of the Earth, assessing the state of ecosystem services. It was a kind of health of the Earth check-up. Among its conclusions, the MEA highlighted that human population and economic growth came at the expense of natural resources, which had caused substantial – and in some cases irreversible – loss of biodiversity, and that if these continued at the same rate, in the future there would be no natural resources whatsoever. This report is little known outside of the research environment, but every inhabitant of the Earth should read it (the good news is that the 5 technical volumes of thousands of pages are condensed into 6 convenient summaries!). If the house you live in starts to show some issues, and the floor is about to collapse from under your feet, wouldn’t you want to read the engineer’s report and take immediate action?
All ecosystems, and their components, are inextricably linked to one another by connections that we often fail to fully perceive. It is the famous butterfly effect described by Edward Lorenz.
Meteorologist, mathematician and inventor, in 1972 with his provocative article entitled “Can the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil trigger a tornado in Texas?” pointed out how everything in Nature is connected. Fonte:Lorenz This might mean that the fight against mosquitoes made in Italy by General Badoglio during the Second World War is linked to the fall of the straw roofs of the populations of Borneo ten years later. Or that the introduction of about twenty pairs of fluffy rabbits in Australia has led to the near extinction of birds, marsupials, eucalyptus forests and desertification.
But how then do we keep Nature healthy, since its fate so intimately depends on ours as well?
We hear constantly about climate change, but to see it in action we only need to look at Italy. By 2100 climate related sea level rise will radically change the current morphology of the peninsula, submerging an area as large as Liguria – Venice and Otranto, where today thousands of people live, will no longer be on land. This will happen in the next 80 years, the lifetime of a human being.
Whether we are in the centre of Milan, or at the top of the Gran Paradiso massif, we still depend on Nature – where we live makes no difference to this need. In natural areas, where our presence has created only minor environmental alterations, ecosystems remain ‘healthy’ and able to help and support us. Forests for example, when they ‘work’ properly, capture carbon from the atmosphere and fix it in their wood, leaves and roots, and in the soil, allowing the atmosphere to maintain a stable composition.
Carbon storage is important because it allows sequestering part of the carbon dioxide (CO2) present in excess in the atmosphere and its transfer to other compartments, such as soil or vegetation, where it will reside for medium to long residence times. This is, among others, one natural way to reduce the levels of atmospheric CO2.
Whether we are in the centre of Milan, or at the top of the Gran Paradiso massif, we still depend on Nature – where we live makes no difference to this need.”
One end of the spectrum we have forests, at the other we have cities. The urban ecosystem (which is also a proper ecosystem) is a highly altered environment (Piazza Duomo, the opulent, marble-covered, fashion-filled main plaza of Milan once was a network of marshes and thick lowland oak forests, inhabited by deer and lynx). Thus whilst forests evolve naturally, cities have an advantage over natural ecosystems in that they can be designed: through urban planning we can decide how we build our living habitat, and optimize it with all the ecosystem services we need.
Today cities are no longer just the result of wild cementing practices as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. In Italy, cities built during and after the economic boom had the sole goal of amassing people in small spaces to increase production. Such urban realities contrasted strongly with the rest of Italy, which was still defined by a rural dimension. Initially, people moved from the countryside to the city to escape hunger and poor living conditions, but after a few decades of city life, the countryside and agricultural areas became the almost ideal way of living, with slower rhythms and greater well-being. The philosophy of urban life has changed: cities should no longer be concrete block after concrete block, they should be ‘green’, healthy, living places. The recent pandemic spread of the COVID-19 virus that has confined us to live inside our own houses has shown that urban green spaces have the potential to become the new aggregation areas, and might soon replace the traditional places of interaction, such the plazas, our ancient agoras.
Can cities become that ideal place where we would actually enjoy living?”
So can cities become that ideal place where we would actually enjoy living? European policies are strongly pushing in a direction that sees cities becoming more integrated with nature (city and nature seems an oxymoron, yet it is discussed like so). For example, cities can be designed to minimize soil sealing, maintaining wherever possible a living soil where vegetation can grow. And again, it is possible to build cities “accessorized” with natural systems that can purify the air we breathe, or limit the heat effect, or maintain healthy rivers and riverbanks, which in turn control flooding, recharge the water table, and host fish, birds, insects and mammals.
In Italy, urban green infrastructures are among the key players for the enhancement of biodiversity, and are one of the main tools to let Italy switch to a “green economy”. Many cities (Milan, Turin, Genoa, Prato, Cervia…) are planning to become real new cities, based on the conservation and enhancement of our natural capital. For example, Milan, in agreement with the European Commission, has adopted a long-term climate plan. Among the various initiatives, there is an urban forestation project that provides for the planting of 3 million trees by 2030. At the same time, decementification is encouraged, and new urban expansion has also been reduced compared to what was previously planned, returning many areas to green or agricultural zones.
These are just a few examples of the possible strategies that can be put in place to protect Nature, but the message to take home is the one with which we opened this story.
Nature is worth it.