Restoring the economy’s natural support systems – reforesting the earth, protecting topsoil, restoring rangelands and fisheries, stabilizing water tables, and protecting biological diversity- would cost just $110 billion a year, says Lester Brown in his latest book, World on the Edge.
We spend that much with the blink of an eye in the US.
We’re seeing the consequences of postponing these investments.
Lester Brown points to the torrential floods in Pakistan in last two summers as an example.
" The record flooding in the late summer of 2010 was the most devastating natural disaster in Pakistan’s history. The media coverage reported torrential rains as the cause, but there is much more to the story. When Pakistan was created in 1947, some 30% of the landscape was covered by forests. Now it is 4%. Pakistan’s livestock herd outnumbers that of the US. With little forest still standing and the countryside grazed bare, there was scant vegetation to retain the rainfall.
Pakistan, with 185 million people squeezed into an area only slightly larger than Texas, is an ecological basket case. If it can’t restore its forests and grazing lands, it will only suffer more "natural" disasters in the future.
What would it take to restore earth’s balance?
Restoring the earth will take an enormous international effort, one far more demanding than the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild war-torn Europe and Japan after World War II. And such an initiative must be undertaken at wartime speed before environmental deterioration translates into economic decline, just as it did for the Sumerians, the Mayans, and many other early civilizations whose archeological sites we study today.
Our natural systems are the foundation of our economy.
Restore Forests
Why: conserve soil, reduce flooding, provide firewood, sequester carbon.
Forested areas are expanding in the northern hemisphere’s industrial countries, but in developing nations, 380 million acres would be needed for fuelwood, to conserve soils and restore hydrological stability, plus 75 million acres to produce lumber, paper, and other products.
It costs about $160 an acre for the trees and labor to plant them – bringing the total to just $6 billion a year to plant those 380 million acres over a decade.
To stabilize the climate, hundreds of millions of acres of marginal lands would be planted over 10 years. That would cost about $17 billion a year.
Conserve Topsoil
To reduce erosion to the rate of new soil formation, land that can’t sustain cultivation would be retired – an estimated one tenth of the world’s cropland.
In the US, that would be nearly 35 million acres. Farmers would be paid about $50 per acre to keep it out of production, and would also be paid to plant it with grasses or trees each year, about $2 billion.
If these lands aren’t planted, the topsoil will be lost and the land will be barren. Across the world, it would cost about $16 billion annually.
On lands that are eroding faster than new soil can be formed, farmers would be encouraged to use conservation practices such as contour farming, strip cropping, and minimum-till or no-till farming. This would cost $8 billion a year worldwide.
Rangeland Restoration
The U.N. Plan of Action to Combat Desertification estimates it would cost $9 billion per year for 20 years to implement measures such as rangeland management, financial incentives to eliminate overstocking, and revegetation with appropriate rest periods, during which grazing would be banned.
Every $1 invested in rangeland restoration yields a return of $2.50 in income from the increased productivity of rangelands, and countries with the most deteriorated lands tend to be the world’s poorest. The do-nothing alternative will ultimately result in millions of refugees who can no longer support themselves on such degraded land. Restoring this land will also sequester carbon.
Fishery Restoration
To manage marine reserves covering 30% of the world’s oceans would cost $12-14 billion a year, without counting the additional income from recovering fisheries.
"Our study suggests that we could afford to conserve the seas and their resources in perpetuity, and for less than we are now spending on subsidies to exploit them unsustainably," says Andrew Balmford, who led research at Cambridge University. It would also create more than 1 million jobs.
Stabilizing Water Tables
Simply eliminating subsidies that often encourage the wasteful use of irrigation water can stabilize water supplies. In the US, for example, water prices are well below costs. Raising the cost of water fosters more efficient use.
It would cost about $10 billion a year for research and the economic incentives needed for farmers, cities, and industries to use more water-efficient practices and technologies.
Wildlife Protection
The World Parks Congress estimates the annual shortfall in funding needed to manage and protect existing parks is $25 billion a year.
It would cost just $31 billion to set aside those biologically diverse hotspots that are not yet protected.
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