Putting a Value on Bees, Trees and the Rest of Nature

2010年2月17日

Bee hives -http://www.flickr.com/photos/piterpan// CC由2.0

我们的父母告诉我们：“钱不会在树上生长。”他们是对的。但是，树木对于赚钱至关重要，而不仅仅是因为它们提供的论文。越来越多的公司认识到，森林和树对每个人的繁荣都是必不可少的。毕竟，我们生活在一个具有基于自然的经济的社会中，并且没有健康的生态系统，自然所提供的资源就不可能存在。

Resource economists typically depict nature as doing four general favors for us: providing things like food and water; regulating things like floods and droughts; supporting life through basic processes like photosynthesis, soil formation and material cycling; and enhancing cultural things like spiritual refreshment and scientific discovery. Valuing these services is complicated and is done by several methods, like calculating replacement value, or willingness to pay. As resources get scarcer, valuation of these services will become more and more a part of every business.

斯坦福大学的Gretchen C. Daily记录了结合资源价值和商业努力的市场机制的发展，以便保存土地，人们可以过上美好的生活。她编辑了开创性的收藏“大自然的服务”，where some of these values were first identified, and co-authored“自然的新经济”，a case-by-case account of how different organizations have used these values to make conservation pay.

一个例子是纽约市的顽固决定，即保护其地表供水的2,000平方英里的流域，而不是试图治疗退化的水。机械过滤厂的处理费用是保存其自然（和上级）的四倍。选择是基于森林生态系统提供的服务，例如过滤，侵蚀控制和流动调节。

Claire Kremen of U.C. Berkeley正在调查这些蜜蜂为北加州的农作物提供的土地使用实践，野生蜜蜂社区和授粉服务之间的关系。如果她和她的同事可以确定这些本地蜜蜂所提供的价值，那么土地规划师和农艺师可以计算自然栖息地和替代性耕作实践的价值，以使蜜蜂保持健康和工作。到目前为止，他们发现的是，野生蜜蜂能够授粉我们目前的大部分作物。他们只需要住在他们附近，而不需要被农药毒气即可。

In the face of recent colony collapses of commercial bee operations, this research is especially important as an insurance against the loss of food production. Estimates of the value of insect-pollinated crops vary widely, but a figure in the tens of billions of dollars is not unreasonable. Bees do most of this pollinating. Kremen's team is documenting the critical floral and nesting resources the bees need. They will then use this information to develop protocols for restoring natural habitat and managing farmlands to promote bee diversity, abundance, and the pollination services these bees provide.

这se examples illustrate so-called "natural capital" models, in which biological processes are quantified, assigned a monetary value, and made part of the policies or compacts of a capitalist society. The broad conceptual underpinning of these models came from many sources, but most well known is the seminal work“自然资本主义”，by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins. The thesis of the book is that current business practices assign values to only three of the four types of capital found in our world: human, financial and manufactured, while leaving out the most important, natural. This capital is made up of the resources, living systems and ecosystem services provided by the living planet. The next industrial revolution, write the authors, will be in resource productivity, but it will only yield a better world if natural capital is assigned a fair value.

这联合国环境计划, through生态系统和生物多样性的经济学（TEEB）倡议于去年11月为政策制定者提供了一份报告，该报告是那些寻求将自然资本保护与公共政策融合在一起的人的工具包。企业领导者将能够审查一份类似的报告，以解决他们今年6月的问题。下一份报告将提供有关衡量和管理风险，避免损害，确定新市场以及共享金融，人力和自然资本的信息的实用建议。

与此类努力结盟是一项开创性的合作Biomimicry Guildand霍克，巨型建筑公司。这两个组织正在开发一个直接基于生态系统服务的生态绩效标准系统。

建筑开发的绩效标准并不是什么新鲜事物，并且以前已经确定了生态系统服务。但是，在这种情况下，两者以一种创新和开创性的方式合并。该标准不是基于对环境的影响（例如控制土壤损失量），而是基于与自然历史景观提供的服务相匹配。将标准与典型的生态系统服务模型区分开来是没有分配单位值的事实。仅量化服务的数量，例如储存的加仑水或大量的碳。

Biomimicry Guild founder Janine Benyus spoke at U.C. Berkeley'sCollege of Environmental Designrecently for their 50th anniversary celebration. She described a planned new urbanist community near Pune, India, called熔岩。这development will be India's first post-colonial hill station and will include about 25,000 apartment and villa units in four settlements on 25,000 acres of land. The Biomimicry Guild investigated the so-called “genius of place” within the site's valley and studied both the organisms in the field and the area's historical ecosystem designation, a moist deciduous forest. Team members then compiled a metric of 15 criteria for measuring success, including water purification, carbon sequestration and biodiversity maintenance. They also worked closely with HOK's urban planners in creating forms and solutions that were inspired by the native flora and fauna.

这guild admits that the standards, to a large degree, reflect their aspirations for the site's performance rather than their immediate expectations, and many details of monitoring and measuring remain to be developed as well as new building forms and processes that can meet this challenge. The attempt, however, nudges builders closer to the natural capital revolution described by Hawken and the Lovinses. It is squarely in the camp of regenerative design, much like Jason McLennan'sLiving Building Challenge。

LAVASA的目标是人类定居点，实际上至少通过健康，功能高度，潮湿的落叶林来增强当地的生态。Benyus说：“当城市和生态系统在功能上无法区分时，那是我们真正模仿生态系统层面的时候。那时我们将成为一个受欢迎的物种。”