Thoughts on Natural Capital

Biohabitats’ Leaf Litter
Vol. 4 Number 4
http://www.biohabitats.com/ndg_newsite/newsletter/number.17/

Thoughts on Natural Capital

The idea that a produced good has commercial worth is relatively easy for us to understand. A pair of jeans, a bottle of wine, a piece of equipment…each is a tangible item with an assigned and accepted value. But what about the goods and services provided by natural systems? What is the monetary value of services like carbon cycling and water filtration? Can price tags be applied to fresh air, clean water and green spaces?

According to renowned ecological economist, Dr. Robert Costanza, the answer is yes. In his commonly cited paper, The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital (Costanza, R., et al. 1997. Nature 387:253-260), Costanza and his colleagues concluded that the world’s ecosystems were worth $33 trillion – and that was in 1997. This study and its applications, along with the growing body of research and projects attempting to link ecology and economics (including Dr. Costanza’s current work at the Gund Institute) suggest that natural capital could be the key to conserving and restoring Earth’s biodiversity.

Yet as you’ll see in the results of our reader survey on natural capital, some of you do not believe it is possible, practical or philosophically appropriate to assign monetary value to the goods and services produced by nature.

Whether you see natural capital as a catalyst for economic transformation, a guiding light on the pathway to better land use decisions, or an elusive, idealistic concept, one thing is certain – it is a topic worth exploring.

Join us as we talk with Dr. David Tilley, an ecological engineer at the University of Maryland’s Environmental Science and Technology department. Dave is deeply involved in exploring the use of “emergy,” or embodied energy, as a tool in ecosystem valuation.

Kevin Heatley of Biohabitats ISM applies the concept of natural capital to tree conservation in his article The Money Tree.

See how your colleagues are applying natural capital to their work in their survey answers. Read about how we are working with others to preserve natural capital on two university campus sites.

We hope this issue of Leaf Litter generates thought, discussion and hey, maybe even some new research on natural capital. For further exploration, we encourage you to explore our recommended resources.

As always, we welcome your feedback. If you have comments you’d like to share with us about this or any other issue of Leaf Litter, please contact our editor.

- Keith Bowers, Principal
Biohabitats, Inc.

The Ethics of Restoration

The Ethics of Restoration

Several years ago while we were working on a wetland restoration project, we were instructed by our client to minimize costs by reducing the number of groundwater monitoring wells that we determined were needed to adequately assess wetland hydrology, reduce the size and quantity of plant material that we believed was needed to establish the appropriate vegetation community, and to eliminate post installation invasive species management, recognizing that this would surely compromise the long term success of the project. On another occasions, we have be requested to remove stakeholder participation from restoration projects, asked to be an expert witness to justify land development projects that our restoration work has been associated with, and to convince regulatory agencies that restoration sites should be approved contrary to what the monitoring data suggests. And I can’t count the number of times we have seen our restoration construction details used on other consultant’s drawings without our permission (or even a reference).

As a member of a number of professional societies as well as being licensed to practice landscape architecture in the United States, I am bound to about a half-dozen code of ethics that serve to define acceptable behaviors, promote high standards of practice, and establish a framework for professional responsibility within the various disciplines that I practice. However, to the best of my knowledge, the specific work that I practice as a restoration ecologist, or an ecological restorationist, is not covered by a code of ethics for ecological restoration. In the latest issue of Ecological Restoration (Vol. 24, No. 2), Dr. Rebecca Vidra and her undergraduate students at Duke University report on an online survey of roughly 1,000 SER International members on their views regarding a code of ethics for ecological restoration.

According to Dr. Vidra, more than half of the respondents have faced ethical issues with regard to ecological restoration and that, “something should be done to help practitioners successfully meet these challenges”. The survey went on to ask SER International members if a code of ethics should be developed for restoration ecologists, and if so, what should the code address. According to the survey, an overwhelming majority of SER International members believe that a code is needed and would be willing to sign a pledge to uphold it has a member.
Dr. Vidra and her students have presented a compelling case for SER to develop a code of ethics. With the advent of a possible practitioner certification program for ecological restorationists, it appears to be time to fully explore a code of ethics for SER International. I believe a code of ethics for SER International is long overdue. I also believe that the process to undertake this effort needs to be inclusive, transparent and purposeful; otherwise the code of ethics will loose its creditability.

The Cost of Restoration

Ecological Restoration
Vol. 24 Number 3
http://ecologicalrestoration.info/

The Cost of Restoration

How many times have you heard, “It’s too costly to do ecological restoration”? Or, “it’s best to invest the money in conservation rather then restoration initiatives”. I know I have run across these sentiments more than enough times. Typically my first reaction is to say, ‘more costly than what’? More costly than doing nothing, I suppose. More costly than using conventional means to supplement the functions and values supported by the ecosystem that I am attempting to restore? Sometimes, I guess. But is it more costly when I begin to consider all of the intrinsic values (natural, social and economic capital) that a restoration project yields. Or the true lifecycle costs (resource extraction, climate change, health care, pollution abatement, etc.) associated with substituting an artificial system for a restored ecosystem. Or the hidden costs of missed opportunities and the temporally invisible decay of natural areas by well intentioned conservation initiatives. Now that ecological restoration is becoming a critical, if not absolutely necessary component in our quest to rescue degraded ecosystems and save the world’s biodiversity, it is also garnering ever increasing scrutiny from the public, including economists, administrators and politicians, among others. This welcomed attention brings along with it the need to provide these decision makers with accurate information about the true benefits and costs of restoration.

Just think, a storehouse of information pertaining to the costs and benefits of ecological restoration could serve many uses. It would allow proponents (and opponents) to research both the direct and indirect costs of a proposed restoration project. It would allow someone to benchmark a proposed restoration action with other similar actions to evaluate the efficacy of a restoration program. It would also provide politicians with the justification to support ecological restoration initiatives as an alternative to more conventional projects. Most of all, it will help convince a weary public accustomed to instant gratification that the intrinsic benefits of ecological restoration are well worth it.

Of course there are some hurdles to overcome. Ecological restoration projects tend to be very site specific, embedded in local site conditions, social customs and cultural norms. This may make it difficult to compare and generalize about the costs of ecological restoration over a larger geographic or cultural expanse. It is also somewhat problematic, though certainly not impossible to develop a life cycle analysis of what it takes to perform and implement an ecological restoration project versus a conventional project, or better yet, a do nothing approach. Likewise, it is also challenging but not unattainable to assign economic values to natural capital, like clean air, clean water, and healthy soil.

So where do we start. Well for one, the Society for Ecological Restoration International’s new web based portal – the Global Restoration Network, could become the perfect repository for such information. Imagine a place where practitioners, researchers and government agencies could both submit and acquire information on the economic costs of various ecological restoration projects in different geographic regions. Where life cycle cost analysis methodologies and results could be housed. Or where information from leading ecological economists could be found on the values of natural capital.

How much does it cost to restore a hectare of prairie, a kilometer of river, or a community of rare plants? Do these costs outweigh the intrinsic benefits? Will this information aid in more informed choices concerning our future land use decisions. Hopefully all of these answers are right around the corner.

Keith Bowers, Chair
Society for Ecological Restoration International
http://www.ser.org/