…green makes green

This is the International Year of Biodiversity.  The United Nations Environmental Program, sponsor of the event, wants people everywhere to know the value of preserving and improving biodiversity.  This value, according to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, lies not only in better human health and safety, but also in greater prosperity.

What is biodiversity, and why should we care about it?

Biodiversity is the sharing of living space by different forms of life.  Biodiversity is “high” or “rich” when many living things share an ecosystem.  A healthy forest or coral reef has high biodiversity.  So does a city garden full of flowers, fruit trees and vegetables, with lots of birds, insects and lizards.

Why should we care about biodiversity?  First, we are all connected.  The air we breathe, the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the houses we live in all depend on a complicated web of other living things, most of which we don’t notice until they’re gone.  For example, fishing out the Nassau groupers in Montego Bay let damselfish reach plague proportions, and they’ve killed most of the Park’s staghorn coral.  Without staghorn – a basic building block for shallow reefs – our beaches are being eroded by waves and we have lost an important part of our hurricane protection.

Also, there is still a lot of undiscovered value, especially in the sea.  For example, the real value of sea sponges is just being discovered.  Sponges’ ability to resist toxins and disease and their ability to regenerate could produce remedies for a wide range of ailments including tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, leukaemia and lung cancer.

A healthy coral reef is very rich in biodiversity.  (It has a head start on other systems because the corals themselves are living creatures.)  But Mr. Steiner noted that “The range of benefits generated by [coral reefs] and the biodiversity underpinning them are all too often invisible and mainly undervalued by those in charge of national economies and international development support.”

The latest estimates by the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study, which UNEP hosts, indicates that coral reefs generate annually up to US$189,000 per hectare* in terms of coastal defenses and other areas of natural hazard management.  In terms of diving and other tourism revenues, the annual services add up to perhaps US$1 million; genetic materials and bio-prospecting, up to US$57,000 per hectare annually and fisheries, up to US$3,800 per hectare per year.  These are not invisible benefits but they are certainly undervalued by policy-makers.

Marine Park Value

Last year, the Marine Park Trust tested two new valuation models at a workshop for the Organization of American States.  The models produced a range of US$47 million to $120 million for the Park’s annual contribution to the Jamaican economy.  The amounts are probably understated, since both models are works in progress.  However, these values can comfortably be used to highlight the Park’s minimum value to the nation.

To manage the Park properly, the Trust needs a minimum operating budget of about US$250,000 annually – about half a percent of the rock-bottom estimate of the value it produces every year.  It seems reasonable to expect that funds collected for conservation should actually be used to protect what may be the nation’s most valuable asset.

*A hectare is about 2.5 acres.