[intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
We are aware of the value of Nature lost. We can measure the implication of depleted oil and gas or underground water. We can measure the price of natural resources required to sustain GDP and quality of life. We can estimate the cost of even unexpected outcomes, such as extreme weather events or down -stream pollution or detriment to public health. It’s not that we don’t understand the financial implications of our decisions and investment choices; it’s that we don’t want to add the full actuality of profit and loss in whatever balance sheet we use to justify our choices, even when the deficit is clearly known.
To deny climate change, it past and present challenge to business as usual, is nothing more than cooking the books, presenting a selective balance sheet to justify whatever it is we want to include in our decisions and to exclude whatever it is that undermines our expectations and dreams.
Nature is a most significant factor on the global balance sheet, but to deny or exclude its true value, present and future, is flawed economics and failed presentation of profit and loss for every decision taken that involves any direct or indirect use of natural resources and systems.
When oil is pumped to its limits; when water is consumed to the extent of supply; when extreme weather eradicates through storm or drought past conventional assumptions for the prevention and recovery and future realities of those conventions unreplaced; then we come up against a new, true calculation of natural asset value that cannot be ignored. For example: extreme extended drought -- the desiccated fields are no longer productive, harvest lost, workers migrated away, farmers, suppliers, and middlemen facing bankruptcy. Local and national economies reveal concomitant decline: the regional or national water systems are compromised; cargo barges run aground; port activities, import and export are reduced, tankers and containers ships cannot pass through canals and disrupt international supplies, global trade, the economies of nations, regions, and the world.
The cost of nature loss affects many key economic sectors: biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, chemical, retail consumer goods, food production, forestry and packaging, metals and mining, household and personal possessions. In Nature’s Price Tag: The Economic Cost of Nature Lost, a report published recently by Ceres, a non-profit sustainability organization, estimates “the total decline in ecosystem services caused by five nature loss drivers is estimated at $430 billion per year, with a cumulative loss over the next five years of $2.15 trillion”. The number is astronomical and undeniable as an economic force that MUST be recognized and reckoned with if we are to have any semblance of a sustainable future.
Let me give you one tiny number among that enormous amount: the die-off of pollinating insects and impact on palm oil harvest in Indonesia that is a base element in the production of cosmetics and skin care. Heat waves have decimated that population, and with it the associated pest control, soil aeration, and ecosystem balance. Something so small: estimate annual losses globally: $3.8 billion, not to mention the cost of alternative pollination methods estimated at $110,000 per hectare.
The financial inter-connections are as large and small and complicated as the natural interconnections. This cannot be fully understood if the larger ecosystem service perspective is not included in the real cost analysis of…well, everything. To understand and incorporate this natural reality into future actions, corporate and government financial leaders will need to affirm and insist on, according to the Ceres report, revised strategies “to avoid and reduce negative impacts on nature, as well as its restoration and regeneration. Actions should reflect assessment results, with the most material nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities prioritized. In some cases, it may be necessary for companies to shift business models in order to move beyond incremental environmental improvements.” In short, it may be imperative to embrace reality and to change.
It is too simplistic, too destructive, to just deny a problem because its perceivable consequence is too real and difficult to address. Climate change is not a hoax, and it is being felt in multiple ways by everyone to ever-increasing degree. To ignore it is suicidal and counter-instinctive to another key element in our natural world: the will to survive.
We will disuss these issues and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
WORLD OCEAN RADIO IS DISTRIBUTED BY THE PUBLIC RADIO EXCHANGE AND THE PACIFICA NETWORK, FOR USE BY COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS WORLDWIDE. FIND US WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS, AND AT WORLD OCEAN OBSERVATORY DOT ORG, WHERE THE FULL CATALOG OF MORE THAN 700 RADIO EPISODES IS SEARCHABLE BY THEME.
[outro music, ocean sounds]
