The Wealth of Nature Is the Wealth of Nations: Ecosystem Services and Their Value to Society

Abstract

Everyone is aware of nature. It is all around us. Nature is the weather, sunshine, winds, rain, flowing rivers, and the tides on the coast. It is also the living world, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, and farm fields. There is also much that we don’t see, from microscopic organisms such as protozoans, bacteria, and fungi to the many chemical reactions that take place in nature. If we live in the country, we may experience much of nature very directly. Even in the middle of cities, there are parks, trees along streets, weeds in the cracks in sidewalks, and for many the green spaces around homes. But for most people, especially in a developed country like the U.S., nature is out there. It is something we enjoy, or not, as our mood dictates. Unless we work in one of the occupations where people interact intimately with nature, such as farming, forestry, field biology (the authors of this book), or fishing (Alice Monro’s drowned fisherman), our contact with nature is casual and somewhat intermittent. For most people living in cities, jobs have little directly to do with nature. This is important since the majority of the world’s people now live in cities and reaching more than 80 % for the U.S. Weather is a factor in our lives, but it is generally externalized as a potential source of pleasure or inconvenience, not the matter of economic survival that it is for a farmer. Nature is something we can choose to experience or not, often with—at best—a vague realization that others working in primary economic production such as farming, fishing, logging, and mining are dependent on nature for their direct economic well-being, which in turn assures access for office workers, doctors, teachers and carpenters to the essential products of these activities.