Photo: Pexels/Markus Spiske

As ecosystems continue being degraded worldwide as a result of climate change, human encroachment and various forms of pollution, the planet’s natural capital will continue to decrease. In fact, by 2100 the economic benefits from ecosystem services will decline by as much as 9% while worsening inequalities globally.

So say scientists at the University of California, Davis, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who used global vegetation and climate models as well as World Bank estimates of natural capital values to estimate how shifts in the climate will impact ecosystem services, economic production and natural capital stocks in countries worldwide this century.

Their estimates may even be conservative, the experts say, because their analysis considered only land-based systems such as forests and grasslands while neglecting marine ecosystems for the time being. “The big question is what do we lose when we lose an ecosystem?” says Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, a doctoral student at UC Davis. “Flipping the question: What do we gain if we are able to limit climate change and avoid some of its impacts on natural systems?”

The study seeks to answer that question by considering damages from the degradation of ecosystems that are often overlooked, including losses in clean air and clean water, healthy forests and thriving biodiversity. All of these contribute to people’s well-being by way of “natural capital,” which comprises the benefits of the world’s natural resources to people and their economies.

Quantifying these benefits can be a challenging task with many variables, yet what is not in doubt is that when countries lose some of their natural capital, their economies suffer.

As per the new study, by the end of the century “climate change-induced changes to vegetation, rainfall patterns and higher CO2 will result in an average 1.3% reduction in gross domestic product across all the countries analyzed,” the scientists note.

At the same time, these losses will worsen inequalities because of the uneven distribution of their impacts. “Our research found that the world’s poorest 50% of countries and regions are expected to bear a staggering 90% of the GDP damages,” Bastien-Olvera says. “In sharp contrast, the losses for the wealthiest 10% might be limited to just 2%.”

The reason for this disparity is that less developed countries tend to rely more heavily on natural resources for their economic production with a larger share of their wealth resulting from natural capital. This means that protecting that natural capital in coming decades through climate mitigation and other measures will prove decisive.

“Our economy and well-being depend on these systems, and we should recognize and account for these overlooked damages when we consider the cost of a changing climate,” stresses Frances C. Moore, an associate professor at UC Davis’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy.

“[D]amage to ecosystems impacts human well-being in ways that are both measurable and wildly disproportionate across populations,” adds Jeffrey Mantz, another expert behind the study. “The results will be critical to abating economic losses in the coming decades.”

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