People really care about something they call nature

In this post I explore how much nature appears to matter to people. I attempt to show that this value is enduring across time and traditions and that it will probably continue to matter to humans into the future. 

Nature seems to matter enough for 1% of people globally to donate for the sake of nature and 12% of people spend their vacation time on some form of nature appreciation.

Amount of $ spent:

• Annual spending on biodiversity is around $124B-$200B, with aspirational commitments reaching $700B
• As pointed out on this forum, $121 billion per year is spent by the Global Biodiversity Framework coalition, as a lower bound
• Conservation NGOs get between 30-50% of their revenue from individual donation. Total conservation NGO income is ~$8 billion
• $235 billion is spent on ecotourism with 16% CAGR indicating $665 billion will be spent annually by 2030

Amount of people who value nature:

• I estimate 50 million people^[1] with a repeat commitment (~100 million people counting spontaneous small donations)
• This is 1% of the global adult population and 2.6% of charitable donors
• 980 million nature tourists, or 67% of all tourists (1.45 billion)

This value seems to be ancient: 

• Indigenous cultures from all continents had some form of animism. Many had personal totemic relationships with certain animals and plants. Many ascribed to a "vital force" idea that all beings participate in a continuum of spiritual life energy.
• Pre-Christian and Greek traditions had deities of seasons, streams, trees, and nature. Daoism teaches aligning with natural processes. Zen traditions use nature as the medium through which awakening is pursued and expressed
• Landscape painting is one of the oldest and most persistent artistic genres

This value seems to be enduring:

• Every country has some form of endangered species protection plan
• The US Endangered Species Act remains after 50 years despite costing $1.2 billion a year  plus much more in regulatory burden
• World Values Survey reports 54.1% favor protecting the environment over economic growth, 53.2% had “quite a lot” of confidence in the environmental protection movement, and 5.3% reported being an active member of an environmental organization.
• Companies advertise "we care about nature" because it is a profitable signal to send to consumers and investors.
• Nature apps such as eBird, iNaturalist, birdreport and PlantNet have millions of users
• Property value premiums near nature are typically 5-20%. New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong all have parkland worth tens of billions, but do not develop it.
• This does not seem to be fading with time.

Nature seems to have some biological importance to humans:

• Going on a walk and being exposed to chemicals released by various plants improves psychological health. Seeing greenery and hearing birdsong demonstrates similar effects.
• Exposure to nature has positive correlations to altruism, happiness, and mental health.
• Value from ecosystem services will be discussed in a followup post.

Nature will continue to matter into the future:

• Increasing support for nature seems driven by disposable incomes.
• Rising interest among younger people

But it is not well defined what nature is, nor if biodiversity can substitute for it.

Nature means different things to different cultures, countries, and people. 

For some it means the personal enjoyment of being outside. For some that means isolation but for others it means looking at some plants. For some it needs to be biodiverse and native habitat. For others it needs to include bird watching, hunting, fishing, hiking, or just clean air. Other people don’t really participate in appreciation of the outdoors, but care about preventing the destruction of the earth, preserving the nostalgic environment of their childhood, or care about nature as a form of national identity.  

Trying to narrow it down to “biodiversity” doesn’t improve the situation much. Even within scientific literature, biodiversity has no single definition^[2]. Then "biodiversity" is constantly conflated with many other concepts. In discussion, it is substituted for different values such as planetary “life support systems,” species thriving, endemic biodiversity, naturalness, or other things we like about nature. As a result, biodiversity is a popular term, morphing into whatever the listener has in mind. Worse, biodiversity is rarely an indicator of the desirable qualities that are being sought after, as I intend to show in a subsequent post about ecosystem services.

To summarize

1. Many people profess subjective/aesthetic/recreational/cultural value for nature.
2. People pour a lot of money and resources into conservation, and increasingly so with wealth. There is something real here that people care about. These are ordinary people, and non-specialists.
3. It’s not clear why. It is not totally clear if we should be doing this at all, or in this way.

In a subsequent post, I will examine one of the most commonly proposed answers: biodiversity's value comes from ecosystem services and other instrumental benefits to humans. 

This is part of a sequence on where the value of biodiversity comes from:

1.  People really care about something they call nature
2. Ecosystem services don't fully explain it
3. Ecological collapse is not an x-risk
4. The real value comes from long-term flourishing
5. Conservation in the next century is going to look a lot different than environmentalists think
   
    

This sequence is being written as part of a project for EcoResilience Initiative, an EA group focused on biodiversity and ecosystems.

1. ^{^}

    On average across 37 nations, 15% of survey participants provided cash donations to environmental conservation activities. So if roughly 10% of all charitable donors give to environmental/conservation causes, and there are ~1.9 billion charitable donors globally, that gives 190 million people. Conservation donors might be 20-40% of environmental donors. That gives: 190 × 0.2-0.4 = 38-76 million conservation donors globally. Using 50M as the number of conservation donors globally, that would be ~2.6%  of all charitable donors (1.9 billion) and ~0.9% of the global adult population (~5.5 billion).

2. ^{^}

   Sometimes it means species per acre (richness), other times species evenness, Shannon index, Simpson’s index, or Hill number. In practice, usually only mammals, birds, trees, and shrub species are measured, ignoring the smaller plants, animals, and fungi.