NATURAL CAPITAL - LAND - TERRESTRIAL ECOREGIONS
LAND is a critical constraint on the performance of the socio-enviro-economic system ... but almost totally misunderstood in policy making
This excellent material has been compiled by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF)
A total of 14 Major Habitat Types reflect the diverse array of organisms adapted to life on land. These habitats range from the wettest of forest types to the driest and hottest desert conditions. Moreover, terrestrial communities represented here include the full extent of continental topographic relief: from mangrove forests by the sea to the alpine meadows of the Himalayas.
LAND
Much of the land on planet earth is either desert or mountain and unsuited to human habitation. Some people in the modern consumer economy are using more than their fair share of the land to support their lifestyle. Land is being developed into urban conurbations and for industrial scale agriculture reducing the land that is available for natural ecosystem services critical for the sustainability of the enviro-socio-economic system.
LAND
The total land area of 200 territories is 13,056 million hectares. Divided up equally that would be 2.1 hectares for each person. A hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres. However, population is not evenly spread: Australia's land area is 21 times bigger than Japan's, but Japan's population is more than six times bigger than Australia's. (http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php)
China interest in Argentina land irks locals
VIDEO Farmers worried about damage that comes with the excessive use of chemicals in large-scale agriculture.
Land ... Wetlands TPB note: I became aware of the importance of mangrove and coastal wetlands early in my career when I was the CFO of an international shrimp company. In order for a shrimp fishing company to be financially sustainable there has to be a supply of wild shrimp not only this season, but into future seasons. The mangrove is a key part of the shrimp life cycle, and without a biologically healthy mangrove there will not be a financial future for the company. Accordingly I worked in a variety of countries on initiatives to maintain coastal wetlands. I left this role at Continental Seafoods in 1978 and I am appalled at the amount of coastal degradation that has taken place in the last 50 years mainly because of tourist development and shrimp farming in sensitive coastal areas!
Land ... Wetlands ... The New Jersey Meadowlands
The New Jersey Meadowlands is very valuable real estate very close to Manhattan, New York City. At the same time the Meadowlands are very valuable as wetland and part of the essential natural ecosystem for the Hudson River and local marine life. Prior to 1960s the land was also used as a dump for the solid waste from New York City. This was ended and then the area became the site for commercial development including the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Subsequently the value of the Meadowlands as a critical wetlands has been recognized and ongoing built development restricted.
Land ... Wetlands
Wetlands are transition zones between land and aquatic systems where the water table is usually near or at the surface, or the land is covered by shallow water. Wetlands range in size from less than one acre to thousands of acres and can take many forms, some of which are immediately recognizable as 'wet.' Other wetlands appear more like dry land, and are wet during only certain seasons of the year, or at several year intervals.
Details about how wetlands work and their socio-enviro-economic value
Wetlands Water: No Longer Taken For Granted.
'http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/wetlands.aspx'
Ecology-of-Regularly-Flooded-Salt-Marshes-in-New-England ... June 1986
John M Teal, Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographical Institution, Woods Hole MA
National Coastal Ecological Team, US Fish and Wildlife Services, US Department of the Interior Washington DC and Louisiana
Coastal 'Development' ... many decades of profitable stupidity
TPB Comment: During all of my adult life ... around 50 years ... there has been development of ocean front property. It has been marketed as 'prime' real estate because of its proximity to the ocean and the vacation-like living that ocean front offers. Many, if not most, of these developments are located on barrier islands or coastal strips that have been formed by the natural action of the ocean over time ... and are the basic shield against the vagaries of the ocean. The sand is resilient and moves to absorb the energy of storms, unlike the buildings that are usually rigid and simply break. These development has made substantial profits for the real estate developers, but in the longer term their economic value will return to zero and the natural capital value will return to something significant.
Coastal 'Development' ... many decades of profitable stupidity
TPB Comment 2: During the 1980s I had some involvement with the development of shrimp aquaculture. Texas A&M probably knew more than anyone else about the biology, but all the attempts to develop commercial operations in Texas particularly or anywhere in the USA was economically hopeless. Bottom line, the land would produce many times more income growing buildings than growing chrimp. When the Texas A&M technology waw redeployed overseas in less developed countries, the industry became commercially viable and showed impressive growth that has been sustained for a long time. I am not close to the industry any more, but farmed shrimp from Ecuador is a substantial business, as is farmed shrimp for various places in Asia including Thailand. Interestingly, a company that I worked with many years ago in the 1980s in Madagascar started farmed shrimp production using an extensive 'natural' system, meaning extensive rather than intensive and not using things like chemical fertilizer, food and drugs to maintain the health of the shrimp. I would expect that their product will be commanding premium prices compared to the other intensive culture operations that have quite seriously compromise reputation and quality,
Financing-Natural-Infrastructure-a-report-financed-by-Lloyds
FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper explores financial tools for investing in
natural infrastructure to reduce current and future
risks from flooding. The key conclusions are:
1. There is a large and growing pool of funding
for natural infrastructure, but the availability
is geographically uneven and providing
sufficient resources will require significant
actions by industry, government, scientists,
and communities.
There are both public and private sources
that can fund natural infrastructure for flood
risk reduction. Approaches vary among the
U.S., Europe, and international development
organizations. For example, funding for
natural flood control infrastructure is a
byproduct of other purposes in the U.S., but
recognized as a specific purpose in Europe
and by development organizations.
The opportunities for investments in natural
infrastructure are shaped by various factors,
including local geography, type and extent of
ecosystems, knowledge about local flood
risks, approaches to funding ecosystem
conservation, the capacity of financing
systems, and the socioeconomic status of
communities.
The types and amounts of funding for
natural infrastructure can be expected to
grow because of innovations such as
catastrophe bonds, but current institutional
structures are often ill-suited to take
advantage of existing and emerging
opportunities and are not prepared to meet
increasing risk.
2. There is no single appropriate financing
mechanism for natural infrastructure.
Financing should reflect the distribution of
public or private benefits of flood protection
through the payment mechanism as
determined by specific local conditions.
The appropriate funding approach will
depend on several factors, including local
natural conditions (geography, ecosystems),
local governance (including the
socioeconomic status of communities), the
condition of national financial systems
(including the robustness of public or private
property insurance markets), and public
policies that explicitly support the use of
natural infrastructure. We identify the key
characteristics of these factors that should
influence decisions on appropriate funding
mechanisms.
3. The largest opportunities for funding are in
the redirection of post-disaster recovery
funds to pre-disaster investments in risk
reduction.
Flood risk reduction should be undertaken
before the flood occurs, but we currently
spend much more on recovery efforts than
on risk reduction. The greatest opportunities
to increase resources for risk reduction lie in
combining funds for risk reduction with funds
for flood recovery. These investments will
further reduce damages to lives, properties,
and communities over time.
Recent innovations such as catastrophe and
resilience bonds offer potential approaches
to combining recovery and risk reduction,
while green bonds may provide pre-disaster
financing under appropriate conditions.
4. The largest barriers for securing adequate
resources are: identifying locations where
natural infrastructure can play a significant
role in flood risk reduction; developing the
experience and standards to overcome
institutional biases that favor gray
infrastructure; and developing institutional
arrangements capable of matching available
funding with the needs of individual
situations.
To develop new financing, it is critical to
develop a body of experience that would
expand the existing foundation of natural
systems management, risk assessment, and
valuation analysis of natural infrastructure,
and increase its acceptance and use. The
identification of viable projects for naturebased
risk reduction is critical for expanding
pools of available funds. The identification of
specific projects- including the location, the
ecosystem restoration methods, the
expected benefits, and the regulatory
feasibility- will often need to be included in
the up-front costs of the development of new
financing vehicles.
Infrastructure banks are an example of
institutions that can be structured to match
funders with specific needs. These banks
can pool the funding needs of different
natural infrastructure projects to make them
attractive to private capital markets. It will be
necessary to create special purpose
organizations that can capture the benefits
of risk reduction in ways that support
market-based finance.
The funding strategy to be used for any specific
project will depend primarily on the geographic,
economic, and institutional circumstances in each
location. But it is possible to create a general
framework to catalogue the different approaches to
financing, from which locally-determined funding
strategies can be formed. This paper proposes such
a framework, then outlines and examines the
options currently available under the framework, and
concludes with an assessment of how funding may
expand in the future.
The business case for soil
Action on soil sustainability must move beyond the farm and into the boardroom, urges Jess Davies ... Nature-The-Value-of-Soil
http://truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Land/Nature-The-Value-of-Soil.pdf
Savanna
Savanna covers approximately 20% of the Earth's land area. There are several variants of savanna.
Tropical and subtropical savannas are classified with tropical and subtropical grasslands and shrublands as the tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. The savannas of Africa, including the Serengeti, famous for its wildlife, are typical of this type. The Brazilian savanna (Cerrado) is also included in this category, known for its exotic and varied flora.
Temperate savannas are mid-latitude savannas with wetter summers and drier winters. They are classified with temperate savannas and shrublands as the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, that for example cover much of the Great Plains of the United States. (See areas such as the Central forest-grasslands transition).
Mediterranean savannas are mid-latitude savannas in Mediterranean climate regions, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, part of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. The oak tree savannas of California, part of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, fall into this category.
Flooded savannas are savannas that are flooded seasonally or year-round. They are classified with flooded savannas as the flooded grasslands and savannas biome, which occurs mostly in the tropics and subtropics.
Montane savannas are high-altitude savannas, located in a few spots around the world's high mountain regions, part of the montane grasslands and shrublands biome. The lowland savannas of the Angolan Scarp savanna and woodlands ecoregion are an example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savanna
Impervious-surfaces-water-management-Rutgers-GI-Brochure
Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program ...
Christopher C. Obropta, Ph.D., P.E.Extension Specialist in Water Resources Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey obropta@envsci.rutgers.edu
Jeremiah Bergstrom, LLA, ASLA Senior Research Project Manager Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey jbergstrom@envsci.rutgers.edu
GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE GUIDANCE for reducing the impacts of impervious cover on water quality
'http://truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Land/Impervious-surfaces-water-management-Rutgers-GI-Brochure.pdf'
TERRESTRIAL ECOREGIONS
A total of 14 Major Habitat Types reflect the diverse array of organisms adapted to life on land. These habitats range from the wettest of forest types to the driest and hottest desert conditions. Moreover, terrestrial communities represented here include the full extent of continental topographic relief: from mangrove forests by the sea to the alpine meadows of the Himalayas.
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