🌅 Antarctica’s “ecosystem services”

SOURCE

Stoeckl et al. (2024)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Antarctica and the Southern Ocean provide around $180 billion in economic value to the world each year, with high-end estimates suggesting the value could be as great as $724 billion. The region helps regulate Earth’s climate by absorbing CO2 in its water and reflecting heat with its ice. It also helps move water around the globe, transporting heat, fresh water, and carbon nutrients.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The direct and indirect benefits nature provides for humans are known as “ecosystem services.” The benefits provided by Antarctica and the Southern Ocean include direct “visible” benefits like Antarctic tourism (valued at $820 million) and fisheries ($370 million), and indirect “invisible” benefits ($179 billion) provided by the various crucial Earth systems the region supports, known as “regulating services.” The authors of the present study say the indirect benefits are best valued in terms of economic damages avoided, like the catastrophic coastal flooding that would happen around the globe if the 30 million cubic kilometers of ice contained in the Antarctic ice sheet melted.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Antarctica and the Southern Ocean is governed by the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed in 1959 and didn’t contemplate the region's warming temperatures and increasingly acidic waters. The treaty gives the 58 signatories authority to safeguard some of the region’s services, like tourism, fishing, and science, but doesn’t allow stakeholders to safeguard others. The study authors say it’s time for the treaty to evolve and go further to safeguard the benefits the region provides.