In the climate crisis, wetlands have more economic value than new development | Editorial
Coastal cities worldwide are squeezed by two opposing forces: urban sprawl and the rising sea. This struggle is intensely visible in the flatlands of South Florida, where burgeoning neighborhoods routinely flood and saltwater inundation damages the estuaries that protect communities from the worst of our climate crisis.
Wetlands, coastal plains, sand dunes, forests, and many other permeable surfaces do cheaply what engineered levees, seawalls and pumps do at a cost of billions of dollars. They protect the land around them from storm surge, flooding rains, erosion and pollution. They are vital infrastructure that makes us more resilient against climate change, and the cost of destroying them or weakening their ability to function must be factored into the decisions we make to build and grow.
The concept of “natural capital,” or the idea that ecosystem services should be valued in a similar manner as any form of wealth, dates back to the 1970s. Markets have always valued timber as a commodity, for example, but not the services that came along with producing it, such as soil maintenance, carbon storage, erosion control and nutrient cycling. We didn't need a market for resources that industrialists saw as abundant and endlessly renewable.
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