Losing another kind of green
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images Need an even greater economic catastrophe to keep your mind off the financial crisis? How about the rainforest crunch? According to a report by the European Union commissioned study, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, deforestation is costing the world up to five times more than the financial crisis figures (so ...
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
Need an even greater economic catastrophe to keep your mind off the financial crisis? How about the rainforest crunch?
Need an even greater economic catastrophe to keep your mind off the financial crisis? How about the rainforest crunch?
According to a report by the European Union commissioned study, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, deforestation is costing the world up to five times more than the financial crisis figures (so far) — between $2 and $5 trillion a year.
Sound like a stretch? As FP likes to say, “think again.” Forests provide a plethora of “services,” such as carbon dioxide absorption, erosion prevention, and biodiversity (which, in the most selfishly pragmatic evaluation spells out new medicines, new food sources, and eye candy). So if the forests disappear, we’ll have to find a new way to pay for — or live without — those kinds of services. The price tag is basically impossible to estimate (though leave it to the EU to try) but certainly huge.
A second phase of the study will be completed by 2010. If things keep going the way they have been for the last couple of days, the financial crisis might just have time to catch up.
Elizabeth Dickinson is International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Colombia.
More from Foreign Policy


Is Cold War Inevitable?
A new biography of George Kennan, the father of containment, raises questions about whether the old Cold War—and the emerging one with China—could have been avoided.


So You Want to Buy an Ambassadorship
The United States is the only Western government that routinely rewards mega-donors with top diplomatic posts.


Can China Pull Off Its Charm Offensive?
Why Beijing’s foreign-policy reset will—or won’t—work out.


Turkey’s Problem Isn’t Sweden. It’s the United States.
Erdogan has focused on Stockholm’s stance toward Kurdish exile groups, but Ankara’s real demand is the end of U.S. support for Kurds in Syria.