United Nations Report Documents the Economic Benefits of Nature Conservation

October 20, 2010

The report, titled “Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature,” is written by Pavan Sukhdev, a banker who heads the UN’s green economy initiative, and describes the global tendency to take advantage of nature’s free services without applying economic value to them. The report points out that deforestation costs millions of dollars in flooding, greenhouse gas emissions, and water purification- more money than it provides to the world’s economy. Canada does a poor job of acknowledging the economic realities of environmental degradation and ranks 29th out of 33 countries in “creating economic incentives to reduce pollution and conserve nature.”