Looking ahead: How can we use market tools to sustain ecosystems?

Background/Question/Methods

Ecosystems sustain and fulfill human life. They provide the food, clean water, and energy that fuel our bodies, communities, andeconomies; they support our livelihoods, and provide inspiration and identity. All around the world, these ecosystems, and the services they provide to humans are under threat. We are losing our natural capital because we do not know nature's true worth. Government officials, conservation professionals, landowners, investors, and coastal planners routinely make decisions about how to use natural resources, but they often lack a systematic way to demonstrate the future costs and benefits of their decisions for people and the environment. The Natural Capital Project aims to meet this challenge by developing scientifically-based tools to valuenature's benefits to society.

Results/Conclusions

In this talk I will share some of the stories and lessons learned from our work in China, Sumatra, Hawai’i, Colombia, Belize and North America. This work is a call to arms for scientists to help integrate ecosystem service valuation into spatial planning and natural resource use decision-making around the world.