Text and photo: Ian Michler. Article from the February 2013 issue of Africa Geographic Magazine.
Isn’t it time, asks Ian Michler, that we give value to the natural assets of the planet we live on? But, he cautions, perhaps it’s also time to rethink how we define value, particularly when it’s applied outside the norm of political and economic systems.
‘If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10 000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.’ No other statement puts the relative value of humans into perspective better than this gem from the great biologist E.O. Wilson.
But that, of course, is not how most of us view our species and what it’s worth. Yes, we are preoccupied with the notion of value, but it’s almost always from an anthropocentric standpoint. The values that really concern us as individuals are those that enable us to know the exact cost of, or increment to, our material wealth, including the worth that we place on ourselves when we take out life insurance policies.
Expressed in various interpretations of monetary value, our assessments of worth stem directly from the political and economic systems that have been shaped and adjusted over the past few hundred years and now govern our living. The systems’ driving purpose is the creation of wealth, which is collectively valued to depict growth and development. Whether measured at individual, national or global level, wealth is the fundamental yardstick of so-called progress.
We have got to this point by regarding everything on earth as a resource to be priced by means of a host of market mechanisms, some basic and others quite sophisticated. In fact, we have taken the model to such extremes that if we cannot measure a resource’s immediate utilisation or economic benefit, it is deemed to have no value at all.
But – as we are now beginning to understand – this is precisely where our much-vaunted model of material capitalism has broken down. We have failed to place value on what natural resources do for the planet – the ecosystem services that are the most vital assets of all. Wilson’s statement becomes clear: it is the insects that have value, not the humans.
This is not to say that some environmentalists and economists have not tried to put a monetary value on the planet’s biodiversity and the natural life-support systems that are so vital if we are to continue to create wealth. Robert Costanza and his colleagues made the first attempt in 1997 (Nature, vol. 387), assessing it at US$33-trillion; the Corporate Eco Forum upped it to US$72-trillion in 2011.
If we cannot measure a resource’s immediate utilisation or economic benefit, it is deemed to have no value at all
The Rio+20 summit addressed some of these issues in June 2012, while closer to home a number of African states convened in Gaborone, Botswana, in May to sign the Gaborone Declaration, a commitment to recognising how current development models are impacting the planet.
Perhaps looking at cost rather than value will give us a better idea of what our planet’s natural resources are worth. According to the United Nations, the mismanagement of ecosystems costs the global economy about US$6.6-trillion, or the equivalent of 11 per cent of global domestic product, annually. The Corporate Eco Forum forecasts this could rise to US$28-trillion by 2050 if current trends continue.
The advantage of this approach is that it frames existing models with warnings about the extent of the damage that can occur to natural ecosystems and to profit levels. Typically, the twin justifications of ‘job creation’ and ‘economic generation’ are routinely rolled out to boost the credentials of every new project, but nothing is said about the cost to the environment. Yet it is exactly this cost that should be given a value by developers and contractors before their economic activity begins. Only then will we be able to make a realistic assessment of how worthwhile the projects really are.
Cost or value? Either way, are we not simply following the same economic paradigm that got us into this mess in the first place? Should we be using the same parameters to place utilisation values and ownership rights on natural resources or processes that, it could be argued, are actually invaluable – or, some would say, priceless? Is it even possible to adequately value things like rainfall, the 
health of catchment areas, pollination or carbon sequestration?
And if we could, who would be the beneficiaries? Given the record of our political and financial systems, it could well be argued that placing values on the natural world would only be the first step taken by the establishment to parcel it up into bundles of cash to trade for profit. If one accepts that conserving the earth’s natural life-support systems is a task of protection and not a cue for consumption, then surely we ought to alter our entire approach?
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