Mary Ormsby Feature Writer
Free oxygen. Free filtered water. Free flood control.
Free pollution storage. Free pollination services.
The Rouge National Urban Park to the Greater Toronto Area: “You’re welcome.”
Work by the natural world to boost the health and well-being of the environment — carbon-storing trees, water-purifying wetlands, bees as flying fertilizers — has carried on for centuries in the lands, watersheds and valleys that will soon become Canada’s largest urban park. It’s also work done with scant human notice or gratitude.
“We treat the benefits we get from nature as if they’re invisible, as if they have no value,” says Faisal Moola, director of Ontario programs for the David Suzuki Foundation.
Those benefits have now been quantified as dollar amounts in a study released Thursday by the foundation to demonstrate how vital the natural economy is to surrounding communities.
Written by Sara Wilson of Natural Capital Research & Consulting, the study estimates the Rouge region provides $115 million annually in ecosystem services that benefit the GTA.
“I never understood why, when a tree gets turned into a piece of two-by-four when you clear cut from a forest, then it has value to our economy because you can sell or buy that two-by-four,” says Moola.
“But when you keep that tree standing and you don’t destroy it, it continues to help filter our drinking water, it produces oxygen that we breathe and it provides habitat for endangered species.”
I have to wonder if God isn't saying "well, duh!" on this one. This isn't the first time this sort of estimate for value has been applied, but this is close to home.
Have you ever seen this before? What do you think?
Work by the natural world to boost the health and well-being of the environment — carbon-storing trees, water-purifying wetlands, bees as flying fertilizers — has carried on for centuries in the lands, watersheds and valleys that will soon become Canada’s largest urban park. It’s also work done with scant human notice or gratitude.
“We treat the benefits we get from nature as if they’re invisible, as if they have no value,” says Faisal Moola, director of Ontario programs for the David Suzuki Foundation.
Those benefits have now been quantified as dollar amounts in a study released Thursday by the foundation to demonstrate how vital the natural economy is to surrounding communities.
Written by Sara Wilson of Natural Capital Research & Consulting, the study estimates the Rouge region provides $115 million annually in ecosystem services that benefit the GTA.
“I never understood why, when a tree gets turned into a piece of two-by-four when you clear cut from a forest, then it has value to our economy because you can sell or buy that two-by-four,” says Moola.
“But when you keep that tree standing and you don’t destroy it, it continues to help filter our drinking water, it produces oxygen that we breathe and it provides habitat for endangered species.”
I have to wonder if God isn't saying "well, duh!" on this one. This isn't the first time this sort of estimate for value has been applied, but this is close to home.
Have you ever seen this before? What do you think?
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