Bees From the Rainforest Add Up To a 62,000 dollar Coffee Buzz

摘要

In recent years, some economists and conservation biologists have tried to estimate the monetary value of natural ecosystems to people. In the best-known example, ecological economist Robert Costanza of the University of Maryland, College Park, and his colleagues calculated in 1997 that the planet's "ecosystem services"--air and water purification, nutrient cycling, waste decomposition, and more--are worth 33 trillion dollar per year, an amount nearly twice the global gross domestic product. And in 2002, a team led by conservation scientist Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, U.K., calculated that a worldwide network of nature reserves would be worth roughly 5 trillion dollar, 100 times the value of exploiting the resources n them (Science, 9 August 2002, p. 950).