Giving GDP a needed ecological companion

Date:
June 9, 2020
Source:
Michigan State University
Summary:
Gross ecosystem product (GEP) summarizes the economic value of
nature's contributions to humans.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
To have a more sustainable world, people need to put a dollar value on
nature's contributions.


==========================================================================
In this week's interdisciplinary journal -- Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, an international group of scholars show that gross domestic product (GDP) fails to fully capture nature's contributions
to economic activity and human well-being. In addition to the D --
domestic, there needs to be an E for ecosystem. Gross ecosystem product
(GEP) summarizes the economic value of nature's contributions to humans.

Valuing nature's contribution globally is a critical step to affording
the world's forests, grasslands, fertile soils, wetlands and biodiversity
the protections and respect given to traditional economic powerhouses.

"We must bring ecosystem services to the business table for a sustainable future," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, director of Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "The world is
losing a tremendous amount of its natural capital -- clean water,
biodiversity, sequestering greenhouse gases. It's time we give people a
way to understand what they stand to lose economically." Both GEP and
GDP use accounting measures to estimate the economic value of goods and services. The group assigned GEP to western China's Qinghai Province,
which is known as the water tower of east and southeast Asia as it is
the source of three major rivers. Qinghai also is a biodiversity hotspot
that has suffered from population increases and overgrazing.

By applying new accounting to Qinghai's natural capital, the group
was able to not only put Qinghai's ecosystems on a balance sheet, but
also show only a third of the economic value generated in the province's ecosystems was provided to its residents. The rest were exported to other provinces of China and other countries of the world. This demonstrates
the importance of human-nature interactions not only within a place but
also across adjacent and distant places on this metacoupled planet.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Michigan_State_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Zhiyun Ouyang, Changsu Song, Hua Zheng, Stephen Polasky, Yi Xiao,
Ian J.

Bateman, Jianguo Liu, Mary Ruckelshaus, Faqi Shi, Yang Xiao,
Weihua Xu, Ziying Zou, Gretchen C. Daily. Using gross ecosystem
product (GEP) to value nature in decision making. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020; 201911439 DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1911439117 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200609144502.htm

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