From The Wall Street Journal

    Natural wetlands provide flood control and storm protection valued at $4.9 trillion. Coastal estuaries recycle nutrients (grabbing nitrogen out of the air and converting it into fertilizer) and perform other services to the tune of $4.1 trillion a year. Forests provide services such as regulating climate and recycling nutrients worth $4.7 trillion a year. All told nature’s services have been valued at $33 trillion a year. An intact ecosystem is worth 82% more, on average, than the same parcel clear-cut, drained, paved or otherwise developed in a nonsustainable way. A mangrove swamp in Thailand was found to be worth 72% more when left intact to provide timber, charcoal, fish and storm protection than after being converted to a shrimp farm. A freshwater marsh in Canada was worth 58% more intact (thanks to hunting, angling and trapping) than farmed. A Philippine reef was worth 73% more when fished sustainably and providing coastal protection than when blast-fished.

Since the 1992 Rio summit, Earth has lost an astonishing 11.4% (by area) of its natural places. Now that we’re running out of nature, what’s left has a higher value. No one collects money from those who benefit from the flood control a wetland provides, or the nutrients recycling a forest does. Such values to society have no tollbooth attached. Every textbook says that the market is the most efficient way to allocate resources says Dr. Portney, president of Resources for the Future. But the market fails when it comes to public goods. Although the benefits of conversion are often private, society bears the losses