In 2015, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) proposed a bill that attempts to alleviate an approximate $20 million per year financial burden to the state. House Bill 1075 allows the FDEP to generate income from multiple land-use activities such as cattle grazing and timber harvesting. While these practices may benefit the state economically, they have the potential to reduce carbon sequestered in Florida’s forests, and undermine the mission of preserving the state’s natural resources. This study attempts to determine an economic value of annual carbon sequestration by the ecosystems found in the state parks of southwest Florida based on cap-and-trade carbon markets. The economic valuation of carbon sequestration in the nine state parks in this study allows for a comparison of the economic value of protecting ecological resources versus the economic value generated by harvesting and selling such resources. This exercise may suggest an alternative means of making the Florida State Parks self-sustaining. The major ecosystem types of the Florida State Parks in Lee and Collier County were identified through an extensive literature review. The areal extent of these ecosystems and best estimates of their carbon sequestration rates were determined from the literature.
Results/Conclusions
This study includes the economic valuations of ecological carbon sequestration of the nine state parks from Lee and Collier counties in southwest Florida, just over 5% of all of Florida’s State Parks. Our analysis suggests the total economic value of carbon sequestered annually by all of the parks in this study to be between $51 million and $125 million, depending on whether a conservative value of $8.00 per ton CO2 or high value of $19.50 per ton CO2 was used in the calculation. Mangrove ecosystems had the highest economic valuation at about $14 million per year, followed by the cypress swamps at $12 million per year. With 161 state parks in the state of Florida, the economic value of ecological carbon sequestration may be on the order of $2 billion annually. This would be an approximate 10% addition to the other economic benefits state parks provide, including air filtration, storm protection, tourism, and fish and wildlife. These services have been estimated at over $20 billion annually. The results of this analysis suggests preserving the ecology of state park ecosystems has the potential to more than offset the annual costs associated with operating them.