by Andrew Grandahl
Our Sustaining Planet
The natural phenomena that sustain life on our planet are sometimes referred to as “ecosystem services.” These are climatological, geological, and ecological activities which provide essential outputs and resources for human activity here on Earth. And though most of us don't pause often to contemplate them, these natural phenomena form the very foundation of the lifestyles and economies upon which our livelihoods all depend.
Some examples? It doesn’t get much more fundamental than carbon and oxygen regulation. The oceans, dense tropical rainforests, and boreal woodlands of the global north provide the most basic function for sustaining life on our planet: absorbing and sequestering atmospheric carbon, as well as producing the oxygen upon which all aerobic life forms depend. Distressingly, the magnificent rainforests of South America and Southeast Asia are being decimated rapidly to make way for cattle ranching, cash crops such as soybeans and palm oil, fossil fuel extraction and mining, and timber. Not only are people reducing the terrestrial “lungs” of the planet by rapidly decimating the jungle canopy, but the crops and animals replacing them (such as soy-fed cattle) often come with massive carbon and methane emissions. In addition, due to anthropogenic carbon emmissions, the oceans continue to warm and are absorbing less carbon than in previous decades. This is all less than welcome news of course, but important to highlight, as these foundational systems make life as we know it on this planet possible.
Brazilian rainforest, clear-cut to create space for planting staple crops. Rainforests sequester carbon and release oxygen, purifying the air. Image: Joel Sartore for National Geographic
Speaking of the oceans, our massive global stores of liquid water provide several invaluable services to us. Aside from the huge amounts of atmospheric oxygen produced by oceanic phytoplankton populations, the ways in which the oceans process organic waste and regulate potentially harmful diseases is a little-appreciated contribution. As organic waste enters the ocean from myriad sources, it's cycled across thousands of miles of aquatic expanse, where tiny microbial life forms gets to work breaking toxic materials down into safer molecular states. This hydro-bacterial system is foundational to a safe living environment not only in the ocean, but also up here on land. To put it bluntly, without these processes, our planet would be significantly less hospitable to life.
What’s All The Buzz About?
Hopping back onto land, let's talk about some of our most important friends in the animal kingdom: the pollinators. Over the last few decades, the planet has experienced a significant drop-off in pollinators, from bees and bats, to birds and butterflies. Pollinators contribute the most fundamental reproductive services required for over one third of all global food production, and their rapidly declining populations should be at the top of everyone’s list of concerns. Honeybees in our backyard may just seem life our fuzzy, buzzy neighbors, but they perform one of the most vital roles in sustaining human populations on this planet.
The decline of bees/pollinators has forced farmers in some areas to manually pollinate their crops! Image: Kevin Frayer via Getty Images
A Planet That Provides
Planet Earth hosts a stunning array of deeply complex biological, geological, and climatological phenomena, all of which work to sustain our existence. There are too many services the planet performs to detail here, from medicinal plants and fungi, to essentially limitless sources of clean energy, to spiritual, recreational, and therapeutic benefits that are thoroughly appreciated by those who regularly spend time in nature. The simple reality is, we’ve grown accustomed to the generosity of our home planet.
In mainstream Western economics, environmental benefits and impacts generally go unaccounted for; apparently too significant to fully calculate, and too inconvenient to factor in. A study commissioned by the UN concluded that none of the world’s major industries would be profitable if they were to pay for the natural capital they consumed. The same study states that the unpriced capital consumed by global industries annually amounts to at least 7.3 trillion USD; a staggering 10% of global GDP.
It’s time to stop taking this truly remarkable planet we call home for granted. Through using market mechanisms and economic increntives that account for the real value of our planet's natural processes, governments, corporations, and individuals alike can begin to pay for (and hence attempt to preserve) the natural capital we consume. It’s time to include the immense economic value of ecosystem services into discussions about climate change and conservation. Rather than focusing on what nature, if continually ravaged, might do to us, it's time to champion all of the things nature does for us.