World's Oceans Have Huge Economic Value
Nations and Companies Take a Free Ride on Environment
Robert Costanza is a different kind of economist. He’s Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont and believes the value of nature should be factored in when calculating the worth of goods, production, and national wealth.
In May 1997, Dr. Costanza and others created a bit of a stir when they published an article in the science journal Nature entitled "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital." In the article they estimated the annual value of the biosphere to be $33 trillion. This figure is greater than all the annual Gross Domestic Product of the world’s economies combined.
Water a Valuable Asset
The ecological economists estimated the value of the oceans to be $21 trillion, while the land was worth $12 trillion. The actual figures are debatable; only best-guess estimates. However, their vast scale suggests better stewardship of such a valuable resource is vital.
Seventy-one percent of the planet is covered by water. But, when all is said and done, it is just water. However, the world’s oceans are far more than that. They are:
- The basic source for the hydrologic cycle that makes life on Earth possible;
- A global thermostat that regulates entire climates;
- The cleaning agent that absorbs carbon dioxide and generates oxygen;
- A primary source of animal protein (fish) for one billion people;
- The superhighway that carries most globalized trade; and,
- The playground for tens of millions.
The Hydrologic Cycle
The oceans are nature’s solar-driven water pump. The National Water and Climate Center in the U.S. says about 430,000 cubic kilometres of water evaporate from the oceans every year. Of this, around 110,000 cubic kilometres fall on Earth’s land surface as precipitation. That’s a lot of water; the flow over Niagara Falls is one cubic kilometre every 46.27 hours.
This water makes the growing of crops possible. The run-off then refills lakes and rivers before flowing back to the ocean to refuel the hydrologic cycle.
The Value of Fisheries
Peter A. Seligmann is chief executive of Conservation International in the U.S. He says that, “Ecosystem destruction costs our global economy at least $2 trillion every year.” One of the places this shows up is in the world’s fisheries.
Seligmann says “today, 25% of wild, marine fisheries are over-exploited, while another 50% are highly degraded…West African fisheries have declined by 80% since the 1990s, resulting in thousands of fishermen searching for jobs in Europe.
“When the Newfoundland cod fisheries collapsed in the early 1990s as a result of overfishing, it meant the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and cost $2 billion in income support and retraining.”
And yet, globally fish are pulled out of the ocean at ever-increasing rates. A 2006 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization says, “Capture fisheries and aquaculture supplied the world with about 106 million tonnes of food fish in 2004, providing an apparent per capita supply of 16.6 kg (live weight equivalent), which is the highest on record.”
The Value of Tourism
And, then there is recreation. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimated the value of tourism worldwide in 2003 to have been $3.5 trillion, a huge amount of that came from beach activities.
The Council said that by 2001 the economic impact of tourism in the Caribbean was greater than in any other region in the world. Tourism accounted for roughly 17% of total Caribbean Gross Domestic Product and was estimated to generate 2.5 million jobs in the region.
In June 2008, the World Wildlife Fund put numbers to some other ocean-related activities:
- In California whale watching and other types of marine wildlife viewing are estimated to generate over $25 million per year in gross revenues; and,
- Annual expenditures associated with recreational fishing in California reached $545 million in the year 2000.
The oceans are generally treated as an inexhaustible resource. Until their real value is accounted for, the exploitation will continue.
A Priceless Asset not Valued
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