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website, 17 Jun 05 “Natural Capital” at Centre of Poverty Eradication 2005 World Summit Must be Red Ribbon Day for the Environment Says UNEP Head full report on the UNEP website Extracts: Nairobi - Sound and solid investment in the environment will go a long way towards meeting international targets on poverty reduction, the supply of drinking water and fighting the spread of infectious diseases the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said today. “To fight poverty we need three kinds of capital--financial, human and environmental capital. When we damage natural capital we not only undermine our life support systems but the economic basis for current and future generations. Targeted investments in this natural capital has a high rate of return in terms of development,” he said. “While restoring them to health, after they have been damaged, is a costly and often time-consuming affair. So better to keep them intact than undermining them in the first place,” said Mr Toepfer. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the work of 1,300 scientists and experts from 95 countries in which UNEP has played a pivotal role, gives some of the first firm figures on the environment’s economic value and thus its role in meeting the Goals. It states that tropical mangroves, coastal ecosystems that are nurseries for fish, natural filters and coastal defenses, are worth around $1,000 a hectare when intact. Cleared for shrimp farms the same area of coast is worth only $ 200 a hectare. The Assessment also puts a value on peat bogs and marshlands. It estimates that the Muthurajawela Marsh, a more than 3,000 hectare coastal bog in Sri Lanka is worth an estimated $5 million a year as a result of services such as local flood control. Losses as a result of damage by alien, invasive species, in the Cape Floral region of South Africa is estimated at $93 million a year. An intact wetland in Canada is valued at $6,000 a hectare whereas one cleared for intensive agriculture is worth about $2,000 a hectare. The annual recreational value of coral reefs in the six Marine Management Areas of the Hawaiian islands ranges from $300,000 to tens of millions of dollars a year. Studies from Algeria, Italy, Portugal, Syria and Tunisia also point to the value of intact forests. These estimate that the value of the timber and fuel-wood from a forest is worth less than a third when compared with the value of services such as water-shed protection, recreation and the absorption of pollutants like greenhouse gases. The burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests in the late 1990s cost an estimated $9 billion as a result of factors such as increased health care and tourism losses. Costs of restoring a damaged ecosystem back to health are also high. In the American state of Louisiana, billions of dollars is being spent to restore coastal marshes and wetlands as part of measures to reduce storm surges generated by hurricanes. Mr Toepfer also highlighted new and emerging research on the importance of a healthy environment for reducing the spread of diseases. Studies in the Amazon rainforest, for example, indicate that for every one per cent increase in deforestation, there is an eight per cent increase in the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. links Related articles on Global issues: biodiversity biodiversity loss, extinction threats, commercial applications of biodiversity |
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