The Value of What Cannot Be Priced

by Paula Iturralde-Polit

Humans for Abundance Coordinator

One of the statements I find most frequently in scientific papers is that climate change has a negative impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This same phrase, or any variation of it, is typically adapted to the specific context of the article in question and is then followed by explanations and references that support the argument.

As a scientist, I’ve researched these dynamics and how animals may respond to rising temperatures, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that hundreds of papers begin this way. I’m also guilty of relying on that same phrase, which has become almost a cliché in research aimed at describing the impacts of climate change, an increasingly tangible and visible reality.

I frequently read about species that fail to adapt, and only from time to time, if they’re lucky, about their ability to disperse to new places where they may find suitable conditions for survival. Dispersal is simply the capacity to move from one place to another. In nature, this is evident in well-known seasonal migrations, such as those of certain bird species that travel each year to regions offering suitable climatic and nutritional conditions. Humans also excel at dispersal; mobility has become remarkably easy due to technological development, although it has not come without environmental impacts.

In other instances, migration is no longer determined by natural cycles but by necessity. Climate change is compelling numerous species to shift into unfamiliar territories, assuming the risks associated with establishing themselves in new environments, much like human migrations. When I envision the mobilization of “wildlife,” I tend to think of bats or birds capable of flying long distances, or felines that can traverse large areas by overcoming barriers such as rivers or mountains. Yet the idea of plant mobility is far less intuitive and perhaps even abstract. Do plants truly disperse?

Around a year ago, while walking through the streets of Lima with colleagues during a festival, I heard my friend Bernie Bastien-Olvera discuss the displacement of entire ecosystems, which refers to the idea that the characteristic vegetation of a given ecosystem can shift in space. I drew closer to follow the conversation, in which Bernie was discussing his research published in the prestigious journal Nature. In that work, he explains how the benefits we derive from ecosystems are expected to change due to projected shifts in their current distribution. There wasn’t enough time to go into detail, but I was left eager to learn more.

When I read his article, what caught my attention was that he classifies the benefits provided by nature into two types: market benefits and non-market benefits. The former tend to dominate economic narratives because they are measured in monetary terms. This is what a country produces (and earns) thanks to a particular natural resource, such as timber extraction or oil. The latter, in contrast, takes into account nature’s inherent value, from access to recreational spaces to the availability of clean water and air, among many others. 

These values are calculated based on the current distribution of ecosystems, but the question is: what happens if that distribution changes? The study incorporates forecasts of ecosystem migration under a future scenario of a 2 °C temperature increase in order to estimate how both types of benefits could be transformed across multiple regions worldwide.

On a global scale, many ecosystems are shifting poleward, toward higher latitudes. Vegetation spreads and colonizes new regions, reshaping both its existing areas and the extent of its distribution. Boreal vegetation, for example, is expected to expand into areas where it was previously scarce, while in the tropics, the world’s richest reservoirs of biodiversity, vegetation cover is projected to shrink significantly. In the Americas, evergreen tropical rainforests become less abundant within the central tropical belt, such as the Amazon, and are expanding into Central America, where they occupy a larger area, although still less, and with less diversity than they do today. These shifts change the balance between market and non-market benefits because, while countries stay fixed on the map, the ecosystems that underpin those benefits do not; ecological distributions pay no attention to political borders. As a result, a country may lose services it once assumed were secure, such as clean water, biological diversity, and productive soils, and gain others in return.

Beyond shifts in distribution, the impact is substantial. Both Global North and Global South countries are economically affected by changes in ecosystem distributions and the benefits they provide. Yet the effects are far from balanced. The study predicts that countries in the Global South would bear 90% of the losses, while those in the Global North would bear only 10%. This suggests that projected shifts in vegetation may exacerbate existing inequalities between the two regions, as the losses would fall disproportionately on economies with a greater share of natural resources and a stronger dependence on ecosystem services.

The essential contribution of this study lies in its emphasis on the importance of nature’s “non-market” benefits. Although the analysis foregrounds benefits to human populations, it also offers a bridge toward a perspective that goes beyond the human. Introducing the concept of non-market benefits opens space for a vision of reciprocity with nature, in which our decisions contribute to sustaining the vital functioning of ecosystems. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, this relational ethic invites us to recognize ourselves as part of a network of exchange that resists simplification, arrogance, and the dominant belief that we are nature’s administrators, entitled to extract its benefits without thinking about the consequences.

Achieving meaningful change requires an integrated epistemological framework among scientists, anthropologists, local communities, and economists, as each contributes forms of knowledge that complement one another and make visible dimensions that traditional economic models fail to account for. Such integration is crucial for moving beyond the practice of making decisions exclusively in terms of the global economy and toward an approach that recognizes nature as a subject of rights. Incorporating non-market benefits into national accounts signals that protecting forests, water, and biodiversity is not an environmental luxury, but a necessary strategy for sustaining the ecological integrity upon which our societies rely.

Only by collectively recognizing ourselves as part of nature can we make decisions that ensure the continuity of ecosystems and of all the beings that live within them. We are inhabitants of a living system, and as such we bear the responsibility of asking how to care and why to care, far beyond the commercial value that may be assigned to nature. For many Indigenous and local communities worldwide, this is already the case. Care is neither a policy nor an economic strategy, but a daily practice grounded in the understanding that we do not protect what we possess, but what we cannot live without.

This blog was originally published in Spanish in the Chilean magazine Endémico