Dr. Paul Hindsley, the chief economist for the Florida Everglades Foundation joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5RM this morning to talk about the organization.
The Everglades are so important for the future of the state.
Dr. Hindsley said, “The Everglades is a key component of life in South Florida and the Everglades is, as an organization, we have the role of science to action. We want to conduct science and economics, to inform Everglades policy and to educate and engage the public about the importance of the Everglades system and when we think about the greater Everglades system, we want to think about this as this interconnected environment where we get four to five feet of rain over our landscape in these fresh water systems, and the health of these fresh water systems, our wetlands and streams and how the health of our fresh water systems inevitably impact the health of our estuaries, which impacts the health of our marine environment. So all of these then contribute to the economic benefits of the Everglades system and runs our South Florida economy, which part of which, we call the Clean Water Economy.”
Natural assets really do bring value to society.
Dr. Hindsley said, “Our Clean Water Economy really are these industries that are connected to water, clean water connected to the ecosystems that rely on this water. So these are diverse industries. We’re thinking about real estate, which is the value of real estate is heavily influenced by water in our environment, and especially in Monroe County. And tourism, which, again, Monroe County is driven by tourism, $3.3 billion in in sales in the hospitality and leisure industry in 2023 and then as part of that, our outdoor recreation. Florida has a larger economic impact from outdoor recreation than any other state in the country and of course, Monroe County exemplifies this. When we look at the lower 13 counties of Florida, we’re talking about over 40 million visitors to this region from all over the world, and Monroe County, of course, is a is a tourism hot spot and they’re participating in all types of outdoor recreational activities. So the health of this environment, the health of the Everglades, is important.”
The 10th biannual report showed that the Everglades restoration has made significant progress in recent years and we are starting to see some real ecological benefits to the restoration that has been made.
Dr. Hindsley said, “The National Academies of Science releases this report every two years, and this newest report highlights the record momentum in restoration, and this is really from historic funding from the state of Florida and from the federal government. So it’s a real bipartisan effort, which we don’t always have those, and we’re proud to have support on both sides of the aisle and this is leading to real environmental benefits from the Kissimmee River right up, south of Orlando all the way down, we’re seeing results in Florida Bay, where we’re having increased flow in the Florida Bay, where we need this fresh water to manage the salinity levels, which is the major water quality indicator for Florida Bay and this is going to have real economic impacts. Just to give you an example of the of the impact of Florida Bay as a whole, a couple of years ago, our organization had research showing that recreational fishing in Florida Bay led to a total economic benefit, so total economic revenue of over $400 million. So it has a ripple effect through Monroe County’s economy. It’s just incredibly important.”
Continued investment in the Everglades restoration is important for the future.
Dr. Hindsley said, “When we think of the environment as natural capital or an asset, something that brings us value, it deserves to be preserved for its own sake. Biodiversity is incredibly important for our cultural connections, but it also, again, is this vital component of our larger economy and when we think about these connections that we have, we need to make sure that we’re investing to maintain just like we invest to maintain our homes or our businesses, how we train our workers. We need to invest in our in our Everglades system, so that we have water, so that we maintain our fisheries, so that we have all these other benefits, like the reduction of natural hazards that the natural environment can perform, reducing the impacts of waves from hurricanes, for example, or again, maintaining recreation and esthetics for our real estate and for our tourism economy.”
What is the Clean Water Economy?
Dr. Hindsley explained, “Our Clean Water Economy directly makes up roughly 25% of South Florida’s economy and when we think about this ripple effect through our economy, the fact that these industries, real estate, tourism, outdoor recreation, commercial fisheries, it’s diverse. All the industries that rely on water, that rely on consumers, that are interacting with the natural environment, very diverse, and when we think of also the many industries that provide the support for our Clean Water Economy, the business to business interactions, that labor force that goes out and spends money in the greater economy, it has wide ranging impacts.”
What impacts does storm surge and flooding have?
Dr. Hindsley said, “This is an integrated system, our freshwater wetlands reduce the impact of rain driven flooding. Our coastal mangroves reduce storm surge. Our coral reefs, which are part of this larger integrated system, they reduce the impacts of waves. Wetlands in South Florida reduce the impact of flooding by over $7 billion a year. That’s a massive impact. And then coral reefs, there’s research that shows the coral reef system in South Florida is reducing the impact of hurricanes by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So it’s incredibly important to maintain these systems for many reasons. When we think of Monroe County, it has a real estate value of over $67 billion. Now 70% of that is single family homes and these properties are worth more in close proximity in a healthy environment and to maintain that value, we need to maintain the health of our larger environment. This is also tied to our drinking water. We’ve got a wide variety of connections to housing markets, to our tourism related economy. This inevitably impacts things like tax revenue that pays for our public services. So obviously our property markets, they pay for many different public services that we rely on and so does tourism. Tourism on the state level reduces individual Floridians tax bills by roughly $1,900 a year just through sales tax generation and other types of tax generation that’s paid for by visitors to our state.”
The Everglades restoration has a pretty high return on investment.
Dr. Hindsley said, “Everglades restoration is tied to our well being in South Florida and we’ve shown that Everglades restoration has a four to one return on investment, that for every $1 that we invest in restoration of our South Florida ecosystems, we receive $4 in economic benefits. Again, we talked about these benefits, water supply, real estate markets, tourism and recreation. So, it’s vitally important that we invest to have a sustainable, resilient South Florida economy, a sustainable, resilient Monroe County economy.”
For more information, click here: https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/