Dr. Kai Chan is the head of the Canadian Ecosystems Project team at UBC's Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. Dr. Chan was the guest speaker at a Sierra Quadra presentation on Quadra on March 24th.

The Canadian Ecosystems Project team is affiliated with an ambitious international project to develop a new scientific model for measuring the value of defined areas - such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, waterways, marine environments - even the air, to human communities, non-human organisms and future generations.

Dr. Chan believes that too frequently decision-makers have to make plans with insufficient understanding of future environmental issues, which eventually cause economic loss and even death.

For example devastation by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 was worsened by the removal of natural buffers along their coastlines. When Katrina smashed into New Orleans, wetlands that could have absorbed some of its force were diminished because they'd been used for development. Over 1,800 people died and damage was estimated at $150 billion. In East Asia, mangrove forests had been cut to develop shrimp farms. If the mangroves had been considered valuable to humans, the shore would have had more protection when the tsunami hit - and killed about 230,000 people.

Had decision-makers been able to place a real value on mangroves and wetlands, the economic appeal of using them for shrimp farms and land development could have been assessed, the decisions made could have been different - and the consequences less costly and tragic.

The BC ecosystem research is part of this growing trend among scientists to measure the natural world in economic terms and will initially focus on identifying BC coastal marine zones for in-depth study. Because our coast is rife with conflicts between competing demands on resources - such as those between wild fish and fish farmers, or logging which impacts watersheds and recreational users, Dr. Chan expects his research will assist decision-makers in their plans for resource use.

Dr. Taylor Ricketts, a landscape ecologist from Washington D.C. and an associate of Dr. Chan's, recently said "We have better understanding of the ecological things that ecosystems do for us and we have a better understanding how to value them economically. We're newly able, because of a bunch of research by ecologists and economists, to place dollar values on ecosystem services. People are beginning to believe the numbers, and you are beginning to hear about it outside of science journals".

Ricketts continues, "People are beginning to understand there are real economic benefits from healthy ecosystems, worth significant amounts of money . . . It makes people aware of the ways we depend on ecosystems and makes conservation more mainstream than special- interest"