Dr. Paul Hindsley, the Everglades Foundation’s Chief Economist, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the importance of the Everglades.
A new study is out that shows how critical the Everglades is to the state.
Dr. Hindsley said, “This Earth Economics Report, it found that the Everglades is a trillion dollar asset, generating over $31 billion a year in goods and services for the people of Florida and our visitors. When I say goods and services, I mean it contributes to a range of things that drive south Florida’s clean water economy, our water supply. It contributes to real estate value, tourism and recreation, flood protection, our fisheries and more. It’s a critical asset for Floridians. Our past actions, it degraded this Everglades asset, threatening our ability to deliver these goods and services that our economy depends on. Counting mounting economic losses for our communities from toxic algae and sea grass die offs and in Florida Bay threatening our water supply. But the solution to this problem is restoration and protection, the strategic investment. And we know it’s worth it, and it’s working.”
Is there skepticism out there about the true value of the Everglades?
Dr. Hindsley said, “I think we know that the Everglades is this unique national treasure, but it’s just vitally important that we are able to link all the ways that this natural system is connected to our robust economy and the way I think of it is through three kind of broad buckets, things that we really depend on. This is our contributions to our quality of life. We know that people choose to live and visit South Florida largely because of our climate and our natural resources and this influences a wide variety of things, like our natural beauty and recreation cornerstones for a robust real estate, tourism and recreational industries. No place knows this more than people who live and visit the Keys and then the goods we produce, the water for 7 million people, the fisheries, world class fisheries in South Florida, recreational and commercial fisheries and then the Everglades is critical natural infrastructure. It’s our water lifeline, manages the supply, the flow, the water purity, and provides natural defenses against flooding, drought and fire, and it promotes a healthy Florida. So it’s important to tell these stories, to make these links so the things that people live every day that they can connect it to real economic value that’s driving this Clean Water Economy.”
What are the ecosystem services?
Dr. Hindsley said, “If we were to think about it, these are key inputs into the biggest parts of our economy, the cornerstones of the South Florida economy. We have, for example, real estate. Our report estimates $9 billion a year in value to our real estate markets and when we think about this, people pay a premium to live on and near our beautiful waters for the tremendous views, access to boating and fishing, to wildlife and this brings direct value to property owners. What we see is that when we have water quality events, this directly threatens the value of those homes. Toxic algae events, for example, can reduce home value by as much as 30% at the height of events and what we see is that this is, for most Floridians, their biggest source of wealth. And the Everglades brings immense value to real estate in South Florida. For the Keys, this is a tourism based economy. Tourism and recreation is a backbone for this tourism economy and what we see again is that we find value of over eight and a half billion dollars a year related to outdoor recreation and again, when water quality events like this, it threatens our fisheries. It threatens our recreation based industries, and has feedbacks in our tourism economy, and affects a whole range of different industries that depend on people visiting and living in South Florida, just as an example, the 2018 toxic algae blooms, the red tide and blue green algaes that ravaged both coasts in Florida cost over $2.7 billion in lost revenue to our tourism economy and Everglades restoration is an important part of the solution for addressing those issues.”
It does appear that the governor understands the importance of the Everglades because he continues to fund the efforts.
Dr. Hindsley said, “This is a bipartisan commitment. We don’t have a tremendous number of those. Everglades restoration is a perfect example of this. In Congress, our Florida delegation has had a unified voice in supporting restoration. When we look at the state, the governor and the legislature has just signed over $800 million in funds for Everglades construction projects. So, tremendous support on the state level, on the federal level, and part of this is because we know it’s working and it’s worth it. So we have this bipartisan support, based on what we see is a four to one return on investment, so $4 in economic benefits for every dollar spent on restoration.”
What was the process of the latest study?
Dr. Hindsley said, “We looked at multiple different connections, and this was a combination of primary data analysis, doing analysis of real estate markets, doing analysis of visitation to South Florida, as well as using the primary literature on economics in South Florida, and what we find is that through all these different types of analysis, we’re able to construct the important links that that we know in South Florida are vital issues to our everyday Floridians. I talked about real estate, I talked about tourism, but cornerstones for our Clean Water Economy. Another example is how our natural system plays an important role in reducing the impacts of storm surge and flooding, and we see this with our coral systems, our wetlands, our mangroves, they reduce the damage from extreme events in South Florida by over $8 billion a year. This is part of a larger portfolio of ways that we try to reduce the impacts of these events that are part of living in South Florida. We again have this trillion dollar asset, brings over $31 billion a year in economic benefits to South Floridians and to Florida, to our visitors to the region, which we obviously draw internationally. When we think of the problem, this water imbalance that we had from the past, drainage and compartmentalization of our system, the solution is Everglades restoration and we know it’s worth it, and it’s working. It’s a four to one return on investment. And the path forward is to sustain this bipartisan support, to sustain the investment in this Everglades asset, so that we can have a resilient economy in South Florida going forward, because it’s again a cornerstone to this national treasure, and to our south Florida economy.”
For more information, click here: https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/