Ecosystem Services: Pricing Soil Degradation
Lest you think that the costs of soil degradation are only abstract and long term, here are some recent efforts to price them. Direct costs of soil erosion, as measured by the costs of replacing lost water and nutrients on agricultural land, amount to recreation, human health, private property, navigation, and so on, amount to about 150 billion globally, and 44 billion in the United States alone. Soil erosion is extremely costly in the short term, but the benefits of many prevention measures rould greatly outweigh the costs. Even so, the political and economic barriers to the implementation of such measures are formidable (Daily et al., 1997: 127-128).