What are Rainforests Worth?

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecosystem services are the “benefits that people obtain from ecosystems”. Forests are like giant utilities providing ecosystem services to the world that we all benefit from but we don’t pay for. Apart from carbon storage and sequestration, they include water storage, rainfall generation, climate buffering, biodiversity, soil stabilisation and more.

Forests are cleared due in part to poverty, but increasingly due to the demands for land to produce commodities like beef, soy and palm oil. Globally, deforestation results in the annual loss of rainforest biodiversity and ecosystem services worth as much as the London stock exchange. Is this loss greater than the value of the alternative uses of the land?

This GCP report assesses the latest information on the value of rainforest biodiversity and ecosystem services and shows that in most cases rainforests are worth more alive than dead.