Date published: 2008/10/10
The BBC says:
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
...
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
There is nothing new here. So called conservationists have been arguing this case for years. Thus this should be seen as a political, not a scientific document. And it's hard to believe that just because they have found some economist has put his name to such a document, that governments of the world will take this any more seriously. And no doubt there are also plenty of holes in the calculations.
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