None of these efforts is specifically geared toward the discovery of realistic methods of economic assessment of the value of ecosystem goods and services and the development of new economic incentives for conservation, which is why the program we recommend here is sorely needed. We need to understand the kinds of investments that will be required to preserve or restore the functioning of ecosystems. We then need to discover mechanisms to make these investments attractive financially. This will involve realizing as a cash flow to the investors a part of the economic and societal value of the services of the ecosystems conserved. If the social value of the ecosystem services can be transformed into cash, part of which can be paid to those who conserve, then market forces can be harnessed to the goal of conserving our natural capital.
Many ecosystems provide several different goods and services to society.
For example, a growing forest may purify water as a watershed, control floods, sustain biodiversity, sequester carbon, provide timber, or afford recreational opportunities. Its overall economic value is the sum of the values of all of these services, each of which could be rewarded through a separate market. As an illustration of this approach, the government of Costa Rica has recently initiated a system under which the agencies managing certain forests are compensated for the watershed and carbon sequestration roles of the forests on a per hectare basis, and the government plans to extend the compensation to cover other functions. Where markets can be used to manage the provision of ecosystem goods and services, they will automatically indicate a value for these via market prices. These prices may not fully reflect the social values of the services, but will usually provide a good starting point in calculating social values.