Ecosystem services go unaccounted for in the human economy

Evidence

These processes are what ecological scientists term ecosystem services, the structures and functions of the natural world that make life possible. We can assign an economic value to maple timber, or gallons of syrup, but ecosystem services are far more precious. And yet these services go unaccounted for in the human economy. As with the services of local government, we don’t think about them unless they are missing. There is no official tax system to pay for these services, as we pay for snowplowing and schoolbooks. We get them for free, donated continually by maples. They do their share for us. The question is: How well do we do by them? — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 600

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘ecosystem services’ concretely and immediately bridges it to civic taxation metaphors, the core hinge move.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ piece on trees as underused infrastructure — maples as unpaid municipal service providers, air-conditioning, windbreaks.
• XREF: Maple civic services echo past chapter highlights, e.g. trees warning neighbors and the Thanksgiving Address as ecological health assessment. — connects to: Ecosystem structure guarantees that environmental costs and benefits never fall on the same people — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 132; Denying dependence on nature sustains non-sustainable resource use. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 104; Analyzing bio-economy value requires focusing on assets rather than commodities — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 68 (+3 more)
• SEED: An essay comparing the invisible labor of municipal government to invisibly donated ecosystem services — both taken for granted until they fail.

Broader Connections

• Denying dependence on nature sustains non-sustainable resource use. #corroborates (0.85) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 104
• Ecological-space taxation measures resource use plus waste absorption. #expands (0.82) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 385
• Analyzing bio-economy value requires focusing on assets rather than commodities #expands (0.80) — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy, 68
• Biodiversity offsetting moved from last resort to preferred solution through economic valuation techniques. #exemplifies (0.78) — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 90
• Free markets shift environmental costs onto communities whoever produces #corroborates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1051