Counting Canada's natural capital : Assessing the real value of Canada's boreal ecosystems

While the market benefits of harvesting timber or extracting oil and gas are measured in terms The report also noted that in many regions, little is of their contribution to Canada’s GDP, the value of known about the status and economic value of ecosys- most of the boreal region’s ecosystem services is tem services. [...] Boreal Canada: State of the Ecosystem, State of Industry, Emerging Issues and Projections (Report to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy) (Ottawa: National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, 2004). [...] Some exists (for ethical reasons).25 accounting for the appearance and disappearance of ecosystem features may be possible in a limited form For the purposes of accounting for the boreal region’s of account.”27 Therefore, this study is pioneering in natural capital and ecosystem functions, the UN the conceptual design and practical construction of Handbook of National Accounting, Integrated Enviro [...] For example, it was possible While the availability of physical or quantitative data was to account for the amount of carbon stored and annually a serious constraint to the construction of a set of boreal sequestered by forests and peatlands in the boreal ecosystem accounts, we were fortunate to have access to region and estimate a range of economic values for a wealth of spatial, geo-coded inform [...] The PSR is a convenient representation of the linkages among the pressures exerted on the land by human activities (pressures), the change in quality of the resource (state), and the response to these changes as society attempts to release the pressure or to rehabilitate land that has been degraded (response).