printable versionProject to quantify true value of nature, ecosystem services
Gretchen Daily
What is a honeybee worth? Or the serenity of an unspoiled nature preserve, alive with native species? Both have value, economic and intrinsic, but quantifying that value when making land-use and conservation decisions is a complicated and largely unknown process.
To address that problem, a team of conservationists and academics has created the Natural Capital Project, an interdisciplinary research effort designed to make conservation mainstream by answering the question, What is nature worth to people? The project is led by researchers from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
"This project brings enormous promise and potential," said Woods Institute Director Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson Jr., the Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law at Stanford, who helped launch the project on Oct. 31 at WWF's Science for Nature Symposium in Washington, D.C.
Research efforts will be led by Stanford's Gretchen Daily, professor of biological sciences and senior fellow at the Woods Institute; Peter Kareiva, lead scientist for the Pacific Western Conservation Region of The Nature Conservancy; and Taylor Ricketts, director of conservation science at WWF.
"This project brings together the expertise of leading field conservationists and a world-class university," said Steve McCormick, president and chief executive officer of The Nature Conservancy.
"The Natural Capital Project seeks a world where conservation is commonplace, where people and institutions throughout the world recognize natural systems for their intrinsic and economic values and contributions to human well-being, and where ecosystems are viewed as assets," Daily added. "Only then can people secure their own futures."
A price tag on natureThe project has three main strategic thrusts: developing a full suite of tools that will allow land-use decision makers to weigh the full value of ecosystem services, the vast contributions that nature makes to human life; establishing an international network of projects that will incorporate natural assets and ecosystem services in investment decisions; and building constituencies to enhance the impact of these emerging models.
"We are really excited about this project," said Carter Roberts, president and chief executive officer of WWF. "It's one of the coolest things in conservation today."
Research will focus initially on three regions: the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, the upper Yangtze River Basin in China and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.
Putting a price tag on ecosystem services won't be easy, project leaders said, pointing to the honeybee as an example. An individual bee might seem inconsequential, unless you are a Costa Rican coffee farmer who relies on bees to pollinate your crops, they explained. Then the honeybee and the nearby forest that supports it become vastly more important to your economic well-being.
Project leaders Daily and Ricketts have conducted research on the value of such remnant forests near coffee plants. In a recent study, they showed that maintaining forests, which serve as important habitats for the pollinating bees, results in 20 percent higher crop yields and 27 percent fewer deformed beans at nearby coffee plantations. The message, said the researchers: Think twice before cutting down the remaining forest; it's more valuable left standing.
Daily and Ricketts also co-authored two separate studies on the value of natural capital published in the Oct. 31 edition of the journal PLoS Biology. The papers are among the first to demonstrate how ecosystem services can influence the outcomes of conservation planning efforts.
The Daily study quantified six ecosystem services—carbon storage, flood control, forage (grazing) production, outdoor recreation, crop pollination and water provision—in the California Central Coast ecoregion that stretches from Santa Barbara to north of San Francisco. Using conservation planning software, Daily and her colleagues mapped the six ecosystem services along with terrestrial biodiversity across the region, and estimated how much each parcel of land contributed to each service. Analysis of the data revealed that mountainous regions with wet forests had high values for carbon storage, water provision and recreation, while agricultural plains, such as the Salinas Valley, provided valuable crop pollination and flood control. The study showed that through sustainable land management, "impressive supplies of ecosystem services" could be protected alongside biodiversity, safeguarding a rich variety of species of flora and fauna, especially those under threat.
"The management of both land- and seascapes will produce far greater benefits for people when we analyze ecosystem services in a systematic fashion," said lead author Kai Chan of the University of British Columbia, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow. "My research analyzes the value of ecosystem services and looks at the overlap between conserving these services and protecting biodiversity priorities. This will help maximize the impact of scarce conservation dollars, allowing diverse partners to build common ground."
For more information about the Natural Capital Project, e-mail project director Christine Tam at the Woods Institute at cbtam@stanford.edu or call (650) 725-1783.
Kathy Neal, public relations officer at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, and Lorraine Chan, communications coordinator at the University of British Columbia Public Affairs Office, contributed to this article.