What is the Cost of Environmental Degradation?

Background:

Economic theory often disregards the impact of its decisions on the biosphere or assumes unlimited resources or capacity for its needs. There is a flaw in this viewpoint, and the environment is now facing the consequences. The biosphere provides many natural processes to maintain a healthy and sustainable environment for human life, which are known as ecosystem services. Examples include turning waste into food, water filtration, growing food, pollinating plants, and converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. However, whenever humans alter the ecosystem, we potentially limit or remove ecosystem services. The impact of local small-scale changes in land use, such as building a few roads, sewers, bridges, houses, or factories may seem negligible. Add to these small projects, large-scale projects such as building or relocating a large corporate headquarters, building a pipeline across the country, or expanding or altering waterways for extended commercial use. Now think about the impact of many of these projects across a region, country, and the world. While individually these activities may seem inconsequential to the total ability of the biosphere’s functioning potential, cumulatively they are directly impacting the biodiversity and causing environmental degradation.