Conserving ecosystems is not enough. Too much of the global ecosystem has already been damaged beyond recognition, and the economic and demographic pressures driving this deterioration are still present and, if anything, strengthened.
This is specially the case in quickly industrialized countries like China, who has built a world-class manufacturing base at the cost of extensive ecological damage (for purposes of historical comparison, it should be noted that quickly industrialized countries, including Britain and the United States, also underwent significant ecological damage during the process — the differing factor is the scale of resource consumption inherent in late 20th and early 21st century technology and world economy as opposed to those of previous industrialization cycles).
As strong as the economic argument has been for this sort of resource usage, we have come to realize the irreplaceable value of so-called ecosystem services. For example, the long-term productivity of the soil, as well as the freshwater replenishment cycle, seem to depend on healthy ecosystems capable of absorbing and filtering water and nutrients. This has lead to the concept of Payment for Ecosystem Services, the idea of compensating land owners for the the beneficial effects of the ecosystems located in those lands, thus aligning economic incentives towards a greater degree of ecosystem conservation.
These payments don’t necessarily have to be managed by a government or international organization. If the positive effects of ecosystem services to other agents can be quantified (e.g., that of forests on neighboring agricultural fields or on real state values in a nearby town), this opens a business opportunity for conservation efforts.
But why stop at conservation? Beyond historical reasons, the value of an ecosystem has nothing to do with it being ‘natural.’ It only depends on the complexity and sustainability of the multiple ecological cycles that compose a viable ecosystem. We have little experience building up ecosystems, so to speak, from the ground up, but there are no scientific or technological reasons that would make this an inherently intractable task. In fact, with the availability of relatively cheap wireless sensors and aerial and satellite imagery, and with ubiquitous processing power and information sharing capabilities among researchers and practitioners worldwide, research and experimentation in this area has never been easier. We even have the option of using bioengineering to tweak organisms to improve our ecosystems.
The timing seems appropriate, too. The scale of ecological losses the planet is suffering is large enough to make clear the value of creating, besides conserving, ecological wealth, yet we are still in a situation comfortable enough that resources can be dedicated to research and experimentation (during a worldwide food supply crisis, for example, it would be politically and economically very difficult to justify the creation of a forest on land with even marginal agricultural productivity, even if long-term food productivity gains could be proved). And, of course, the knowledge and skills used in large-scale ecosystem building would be very useful in traditional conservation projects.
In a few decades, ecology has gone from a fairly esoteric branch of the natural sciences to a political cause, to a first rate issue of concern for the well-being, and even survival, of human civilization as we know it. As we learn not only to conserve, but also to create ecologic wealth, it is also becoming a sophisticated engineering discipline and an economic activity of limitless potential.
IEET Blog