{"id":255322,"date":"2020-05-19T06:36:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T10:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=255322"},"modified":"2020-05-19T06:39:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T10:39:18","slug":"living-whales-services-estimated-by-economists-to-be-at-82-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/05\/19\/living-whales-services-estimated-by-economists-to-be-at-82-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Living whales&#8217; services estimated by economists to be at $82 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_255323\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-255323\" style=\"width: 1394px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-255323\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1394\" height=\"919\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h.jpg 1394w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h-768x506.jpg 768w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/3940510392_ea9e147c38_h-1024x675.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1394px) 100vw, 1394px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-255323\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">FILE: Humpback whale breaching<br \/>This male humpback put on quite a show, repeatedly diving and breaching, perhaps trying to see how much of his body he could get out of water. It was certainly something to see. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jdegenhardt\/3940510392\/in\/photolist-6waoJD-6wapt6-6weAa7-2aEh49b-2d5ZgVm-71d9sm-fVrmG7-P32tWQ-P4DugK-29B8rKY-M5m3Gw-rGA2Vb-2i96vbQ-MmdUo4-6ZPi1S-Lwcvot-6waqbr-fHYXXb-2gSqcpJ-XCMKmU-o12y1K-27bQcTX-qsHqXj-MUaimP-X68SEq-2i2tYGP-21F3fpy-XDCYAs-8i1wzt-8i1x2i-dePgqr-2gUgWUV-28pf1DJ-fVrmKH-2gSqcBn-NBKUtZ-2c5iSTp-8hPmTK-6weBxu-Rocms2-21GWKeP-yg5kg1-Hj7Lnn-2cjmXZM-qwvf3Z-7Vm2oq-fVrh5E-ver77d-rxqshH-27pEFR1\">Photo<\/a>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jdegenhardt\/\">jdegenhardt\/Flickr<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.0\/\">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"bulletpoints\">\n<ul>\n<li><em>Last year, a team of four economists published a report suggesting that living whales have a high market value for the services they provide in terms of ecotourism, carbon sequestration, and fishery enhancement. Each whale is worth about $2 million USD, they estimated.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The economists, in collaboration with two conservation organizations, Instituto Baleia Jubarte and the Great Whale Conservancy, estimated that Brazil\u2019s whale population is worth $82 billion.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The team says it hopes the notion of valuing whales in Brazil, as well as in other coastal nations, can help protect whales from common fatalities like ship strikes, fishing gear entanglement, and deliberate hunting.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>Each winter, southern right whales and humpback whales migrate to the waters off Brazil to feed on krill and phytoplankton, and to give birth to their young among the country\u2019s rich coral reefs. These whales attract thousands of tourists, and their money, to Brazil.<\/p>\n<p>A whale\u2019s capacity to bring tourist dollars into Brazil, in addition to its ability to regulate the environment and enhance fisheries, is worth a lot, according to a group of economists. Now, they\u2019ve put a figure on it: $82 billion.<\/p>\n<p>This calculation comes from a model developed by four economists: Ralph Chami and Sena Oztosun of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); Connel Fullenkamp of Duke University\u2019s Economics Center for Teaching; and Thomas Cosimano of the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Mendoza College of Business. In December 2019, they published a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/pubs\/ft\/fandd\/2019\/12\/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm#author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">report<\/a>\u00a0in IMF\u2019s\u00a0<em>Finance &amp; Development\u00a0<\/em>stating that living whales have a high monetary value for the tourism dollars they bring into a country, as well as their ability to sequester carbon, and to give a boost to local fisheries by contributing to the food web chain.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to regulating the environment, whales act as giant \u201cpumps\u201d that suck in carbon, mainly from the phytoplankton they eat, and release fecal plumes rich in nutrients that help more phytoplankton grow, which, in turn, produce more oxygen. Over its lifetime, a large whale can sequester about 33 tons of CO2 on average, while a tree only stores about 48 pounds (22 kilograms) of CO2 each year, according to the report. When a whale dies, its body will sink to the bottom of the ocean, storing away carbon for centuries, which plays a central role in mitigating climate change. Since carbon has a value in today\u2019s market, the economists were able to put a price tag on a whale\u2019s carbon service.<\/p>\n<p>The economists estimated that each living whale is worth $2 million, and the combined population of the world\u2019s whales is worth $1 trillion. However, Fullenkamp says these numbers are actually conservative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to put any kind of a price on the intrinsic value of a whale because that\u2019s really hard to do, and that\u2019s not because we don\u2019t believe that whales have intrinsic value \u2014\u00a0we think they do,\u201d Fullenkamp told Mongabay. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is impress people with the value of the market services alone, so that we can make an argument that says \u2018Gosh, whales already do this much for us, and if you think whales have intrinsic value on top of that, then we have even more reason to protect them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If international policymakers can see the financial value of living whales, they may be moved to take more action to protect whales from fatalities such as fishing net entanglement, cargo ship strikes, and deliberate hunting. However, Fullenkamp and his colleagues cautioned against simply viewing whales as financial commodities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhales are not a human solution \u2014 these great creatures having inherent value of their own and the right to live \u2014\u00a0but this new mindset recognizes and values their integral place in a sustainable ocean and planet,\u201d they say in their report.<\/p>\n<p>For their first case study, the economists, in collaboration with two whale conservation groups,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baleiajubarte.org.br\/projetoBaleiaJubarte\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Projecto Baleia Jubarte<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greatwhaleconservancy.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Great Whale Conservancy<\/a>, turned to Brazil. It\u2019s estimated that 64,300 large whales, such as humpbacks and right whales, migrate through Brazilian waters each year, bringing about 228,000 tourists who spend more than $6 million to see whales, according to Jos\u00e9 Truda Palazzo Jr. of the Instituto Baleia Jubarte. These numbers, as well as an evaluation of whales\u2019 carbon sequestration and fishery enhancement services, led the economists to conclude that Brazil\u2019s whales are worth $82 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Palazzo said he hopes that \u201cwhale ecosystem services\u201d will eventually be integrated into \u201cBrazilian long-term policies related to biodiversity conservation, ocean management and also climate change.\u201d However, he noted that there needs to be a big shift in Brazil\u2019s political motives for this to happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlue Carbon has not been high in our national agenda or even at the international agreements discussions, [but] we are confident that the immense value of \u2018whale carbon\u2019 that has been demonstrated can become part of mainstream climate negotiations from now on,\u201d Palazzo told Mongabay in an email.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Fishbach, executive director of the Great Whale Conservancy, who acted as an adviser to the IMF report, said the team hopes to set up an investment fund so developing nations have a financial incentive to protect whales migrating through their waters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[A country\u2019s] tourism can improve, whales watching can improve, fisheries can improve, and the direct payment of money for protecting their whales will have a big impact on them,\u201d Fishbach told Mongabay. \u201cSo that\u2019s a really powerful example of where we think we have a very strong opportunity for success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also important to show fishing and shipping industries the economic advantage of protecting whales, Fishbach said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to make it worth everybody\u2019s while to stop killing whales to understand how they\u2019re unintentionally being killed, and then the killing will stop,\u201d Fishbach said. \u201cWe know how to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While this project is still in its infancy, Fullenkamp told Mongabay there are a lot of \u201cmoving parts\u201d to help bring the scheme to fruition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe valuation is really the first step in the process,\u201d Fullenkamp said. \u201cWe\u2019re thinking about how to do this investment type issue correctly so it\u2019s sustainable and so it doesn\u2019t turn out to be an investment that would disappoint people and can harm the cause of conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to bring the whales back,\u201d Fishbach said. \u201cWe believe that it is critically important for the oceans, for fisheries, for climate change, for carbon, for everything, that whales are allowed to increase in number.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Citation:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Chami, R., Cosimano, T., Fullenkamp, C., &amp; Oztosun, S. (2019). Nature\u2019s solution to climate change.\u00a0<em>Finance &amp; Development<\/em>,\u00a0<em>56<\/em>(4). Retrieved from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/pubs\/ft\/fandd\/2019\/12\/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">https:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/pubs\/ft\/fandd\/2019\/12\/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[This article was originally published by Mongabay. READ: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/2020\/05\/economists-put-a-price-tag-on-living-whales-in-brazil-82-billion\/\">Economists put a price tag on living whales in Brazil: $82 billion<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, a team of four economists published a report suggesting that living whales have a high market value for &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":255323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-elizabeth-claire-albert","mauthors-mongabay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255326,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255322\/revisions\/255326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}