Science Connects Communities to Ecosystems

By Dr. Meenakshi Chabba, Ecosystem and Resilience Scientist

and Dr. Paul Hindsley Chief Economist

How Do We Value Nature's Benefits to Society?

The Everglades holds a special place in the hearts of the millions who visit every year to admire its vastness, clear waters, stunning landscapes, diverse habitats, and rich biodiversity. Everglades National Park is an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. The recognition imparts special status, signaling the importance of the Everglades to the world.

The reverence and the special status, however, did not prevent its degradation over the years, nor render immediate succor to the ailing wetland habitats and the species it houses. We continue to drain the organic soil in the Everglades Agricultural Area, depleting layers of peat formed over centuries and emitting harmful greenhouse gases that further heat up our planet. Farms and cities continue to pollute the wetlands, its waterways, and estuaries. However, as climate change presents new challenges and the timeline to complete restoration draws closer, there is an urgent need to ensure that Everglades restoration is completed without delay, and the restored freshwater flow makes the ecosystem healthy and resilient once more.

The intrinsic value of nature is often insufficient to hasten conservation or restoration of natural systems. To influence an environmentally positive and effective decisionmaking process among communities, scientists articulate the importance of ecosystems in ways that bring to light the deep interconnections between nature and people. Scientists emphasize that nature, beyond its beauty, contributes both tangible and intangible benefits to society—benefits called ecosystem goods and services. The Everglades offers perfect examples of these.

Goods & Services Provided By the Everglades Ecosystem

The River of Grass began its journey south of Lake Okeechobee and promoted the accumulation of layers of organic peat soil over centuries. Its rich soils and abundant water drew modern settlement in Florida, helping establish farms and grow coastal cities. A little farther down, the sheetflow gently sweeps over the sawgrass marshes and saturates the Biscayne Aquifer beneath, providing high quality, clean drinking water to millions who call South Florida home. Finally, the Everglades freshwater makes its way to the coasts to form estuaries at the interface, and sustains multiple species of wildlife, mangroves, sawgrasses, and corals.

Water Supply From the Everglades

We recognize some of these ecosystem goods in our day-to-day lives. For example, by supporting habitats for fisheries, the Everglades have provided valuable goods through time — from the indigenous peoples who survived off the wetlands, to the present-day communities who find plentiful food in the freshwaters and estuaries of the Everglades. Beyond the material ecosystem goods, scientists elucidate the myriad ways in which the Everglades contribute benefits to society. The healthy ecosystems and clean waters of the Everglades fuel Florida’s tourism-, recreation-, and real estate-based economy, and support the livelihoods of millions of residents. People visit the Everglades to experience unique interactions with nature and find a deep sense of belonging. These interactions and closeness to the Everglades gift people improved mental and physical health outcomes and an unmatchable quality of life.

Along with these flows of ecosystem goods and services that benefit communities, the Everglades quietly and continuously purifies the air, regulates our climate, stabilizes our shorelines, protects us against storms and floods, and accretes soil to raise elevation against rising sea level. Scientific research thus makes evident the intricate interplay between the Everglades ecosystem, the economy it engenders, and the well-being of communities that depend on it.

Correcting An Imbalance of Value

We acknowledge the value of several ecosystem goods such as food, timber, and medicine when we exchange them in the market with dollars. However, our market economies do not attach dollar values to ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, water filtration, and water supply that provide invaluable benefits to communities. Without a monetary value, society perceives ecosystems as having no value at all. Thus, society not only continues to over-extract, pollute, and degrade ecosystems, but under invests in protecting and restoring them. Despite the significant role that the Everglades plays in powering our economy and fueling our well-being, nutrient pollution continues unabated, as does peat drainage in the Everglades Agricultural Area. Similarly, maintaining the momentum of investment in Everglades restoration is a constant challenge, as federal and state budget allocations are not guaranteed.

Recognizing the deep interconnections between nature, people, and economy, scientists are working to correct the imbalance in our economic systems, which currently fail to acknowledge ecosystems or the services they provide when measuring national progress. Using research findings from ecologists, hydrologists, biogeochemists, spatial data scientists, etc., economists measure the economic value of ecosystem services that communities benefit from, i.e., the importance of ecosystem services in terms of dollars. Then, economists measure the negative or positive changes that ecosystems undergo over time to estimate the implications on our economic performance. The results of these studies act as economic and policy signals to assist us in making better decisions as communities and nations.

Some question the philosophy of monetization of ecosystems, arguing that no amount

of money can capture the true value of nature. However, ecosystem valuation is simply a pragmatic choice as it adopts the language of everyday economic practice—money—and uses it for the purpose of environmental improvement. Advanced research in environmental and ecological economics seeks to include the plural values with which we associate our environment besides monetary values. Research has expanded to better measure the consequences of environmental change, whether it be the negative consequences of environmental degradation, or positive consequences of restoration.

Recognizing the gap in our knowledge of the value of the Everglades to our economic system, The Everglades Foundation’s science and economics team is creating a roadmap for the environmental accounting of the greater Everglades system. As a first step, the team will synthesize existing research on economic values of Everglades ecosystem services and construct a roadmap to measure the contributions of the Everglades to our economy and society. In a forthcoming study, The Everglades Foundation will estimate the cost that society would incur if we continue to drain the peat soil in the Everglades. In this way, we are developing a better understanding of how the Everglades influences our economic well-being, and thus our future.

Read our 2024 Science Insider magazine: https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/scienceinsider

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