Putting a Value on Nature's Free Services

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Putting a Value on Nature's Free Services Unlike other issues we have read so far, this issue was trying to weigh and value the externalities the environment was facing. Overall, the both arguments were suggesting the same point: environmental services should be valued. However, the arguments differed in a sense that one of them was suggesting it was possible these services, on the other hand, the other was suggesting it was hard to measure this value. First argument was for measuring the value, whereas the second one was against this. First argument was using examples from animals like bees and forests of India, Amazons, South America and areas nearby, over and over. Presenting issue from both perspectives-consumer and producer-this argument made a better job drawing a clear in image in my head. "For the timber and plantation barons of Indonesia…homes and livelihoods"(pg4, 2nd paragraph). As in this phrase from the issue, the producers-the barons in this case-value how much crop can they make out of a forest but they don't consider the cost of the nature's services. "Many of these services(nature's free services) are indispensable to the people who exploit them, yet are not counted as real benefits, or as a part of GNP."(pg5, 3rd paragraph). Nature's services cannot be replaced by manpower therefore, once destroyed there is no way of being able to use it again. The examples given in the argument are helpful enough to understand that humans are destroying the environment and day-by-day the natural resources are depleting. Nobody disagrees this fact. What is more important and hard to determine, however, is to measure the cost/value of using these resources. Here are some ways presented by the book to measure this cost: · Measuring the economic value of a service that manpower can build to replace a service that nature provides. (Ex: Mangrove Forests; pg8, 4th paragraph) · Measure the economic value to a society if they did not have this natural service. (Ex: New York City; pg9, 3rd paragraph) Even though these ways of measuring value seem logical and efficient,

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