No price tag should be placed on nature’s services to mankind, Brazilian minister tells WEF
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No price tag should be placed on nature’s services to mankind, Brazilian minister tells WEF
Value is beyond what we can price, Silva argued
According to Brazil’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, there should be no pricing services provided by nature given their value to the planet and to human beings. She made those remarks this week during her appearance at one of the panels at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Agencia Brasil reported.
Silva told the panel Putting a Price on Nature that the world needed to discuss its “value.”
”The Amazon produces 20 billion tons of water a day. The forest uses half of this water, and half is released into the atmosphere, which is responsible for our rainfall patterns, to which 75% of South America’s GDP is tied. If we were to pump up this water, we’d need 50 thousand Itaipu plants. Can anyone imagine an investment like that, pumping water uninterruptedly in order to feed our hydrological system?” she wondered.
“Nature can do this using only the land, its nutrients, the forest, the sun, and the wind. It is an invaluable ecosystem service,” she also noted while insisting on the difference between “price” -which she found strange- and “value.”
“I think ‘value’ refers to something beyond what we can price because nature has values that our current form and stage cannot yet reach. We could only price something that could be produced,” she argued.
She went on to say that Brazil will propose a debate at the G-20 on payments for ecosystem services to preserve them for the good of the planet.
(Source: Agencia Brasil)
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