The U.S. federal government is taking its first-ever steps to formally incorporate the value of nature into policymaking, announcing a series of measures in recent months and at the ongoing UN COP15 nature summit in Montreal.
Famous for its golden beaches, clear waters and unusual flora and fauna, Hawaii is full of natural riches. For the past year, researchers have been asking whether putting an economic value on nature could help protect the islands' unique environment.
But being able to quantify the full value of coastal systems could result in a policymaking sea change, she said. The actions seek to "put nature on the nation's balance sheet, and give Americans a full view of how gains or losses in nature affect us today and might affect our future," a White House official said by email on condition of anonymity.
"Being able to have some economic figures that can be compared and contrasted with the values of some other activities will help us make better and more balanced decisions about conservation and development moving forward," Watts added.In recent months, U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has announced three inter-related efforts to reshape how the federal government values and harnesses its natural systems.
The idea of quantifying nature on a systematic basis stretches back decades, but its application is new, with only a handful of countries having set up partial systems, said Katie Warnell, a senior policy associate with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University.
While "managed" beehives are often trucked from field to field, wild insects also pollinate plants naturally - but no one knows the extent to which this is happening because it is not currently being measured, Warnell said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - which is responsible for a huge share of the country's infrastructure - has for a decade had a program to bolster the case for "nature-based solutions" – such as using marshlands in flood protection.
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