We need to put a dollar value on the services we use
from the natural environment to ensure ecosystems
are properly protected says Australia 21.
Image by iStockphoto

Putting a dollar value on the air we breathe, the water we drink, the climate we enjoy and even our diverse native flora and fauna by viewing them as “services” and bringing their management into the mainstream Australian economy will ensure they receive the focus they desperately need according to the non-profit think tank group Australia 21.

The WA government last week co-sponsored an Australia 21 roundtable conference in Perth to consider a draft submission to the Prime Minister’s 2020 Summit in April to develop a national policy on managing ecosystem services.

Australia 21 believes that because the benefits people obtain from our land, water and marine renewable resources are neither priced nor valued in the economy they are being largely exploited and ignored.

The group says the yet-to-be-finalised national carbon trading scheme is an example of an ecosystem service moving into the mainstream economy and could be the first of many new markets which would help to rescue Australia’s deteriorating environment, and at the same time, offer hope to Australia’s hard-pressed rural and indigenous communities.

Chair of the roundtable steering committee Geoff Gorrie admitted that the concept of ecosystems as economic entities was difficult to explain and had met with opposition in some sectors.

“We’ve had difficulty even within our own roundtable in trying to explain it in simple terms,’’ he said.

“I’ve spoken to some very strong environmentalists who think this is not a good idea because they believe it will detract from what they’re doing, but we’re really moving into an area where carbon, water and biodiversity are already currencies in the environmental area and they need to be put together into one framework.

“Unless we move other ecosystems into that sort of arena, we’re never going to make too much progress or get access to the sort of expertise that’s needed to save these ecosystems.

“When something is within a market there is activity and things are being done, but when something’s not priced, even in an implicit way, then you really do run the risk of having no activity in that area.”

Mr Gorrie said it was also important that all interest groups, including scientists, worked together to support the idea of ecosystem services.

“I think there have been and still are today, some groups that are working at cross purposes,” he said.

“Science must play a big part in all of this; there must be a good scientific basis for it, not only single-subject scientific basis, but a multi-disciplinary approach to it.

“I think that a lot of scientists don’t realise that implementation is actually a social process and scientists have to get out there and market their research, it’s one thing to know something, it’s another to apply it.

“It’s very important that universities get on the bandwagon and commercialise their research, if they’re not moving in that direction they will miss out.”

Mr Gorrie said that the implementation of a carbon trading scheme in Australia would be the first time that an ecosystem service had taken on an economy-wide approach, but predicted a number of other ecosystems, including water would follow.

“I also see a move towards the utilisation of native animals in a commercial way, integrated with biodiversity protection,’’ he said.

“It’s happening in a small way at the moment - we export wild boar to Germany, we export kangaroo meat and utilise kangaroo meat ourselves - but I believe it will be a much more mainstream activity in the next 10 to 20 years.

“I think those types of markets will continue to develop and through those industries will come control of those environments, because there will resources that can be applied to the other more fragile sections of the environment.’’