WORK IN PROGRESS
The Value of Trees
Why do we underestimate it?
(see keywords including money, accountability)
What do we mean by value?
- This is tricky because we often confuse value with price.
- Scientists explain the world in quantities, rather than qualities.
- Politicians use numbers to manage communities (e.g. taxes & monetary incentives).
- Large organisations think in numbers to balance the books.
- (see more on accountability).
numbers are identical...
- Humans like things to be simple and predictable.
- Money is useful for trading things that are inert (e.g. dead things that can be quantified).
- It saves us time because we can all agree with the arithmetic.
- (see more about the concept of money)
...so timber can be priced
- But numbers are less help in understanding the value of trees.
- Trees may look identical on paper, but they grow differently and support different life forms.
- They are alive until we break them down into standard units for pricing (e.g. as materials).
- But when we regard things as the same we overlook important ambiguities and irregularities.
- (see more about Leibniz's law)
...but each tree is unique
- Local councils need to explain the removal of trees that might damage buildings.
- It is convenient, therefore, to account for trees as simple identical units.
- They might, for example, enable them to say they planted more trees than they removed.
- (see more about diversities)
...living trees support biodiversity
- Unfortunately, all trees are unique and play different roles in the whole ecosystem.
- A well established tree will have a much greater amenity value than a sapling.
- The species of the tree will also determine its value as host to a range of insects and animals.
- Removing it may have a negative impact on the biodiversity of local ecosystems.
- (see an ecological definition of wisdom)
...the transition from value to price
- Blah
beyond price
amenity value
wholesale pricing
...the transition from value to price
- Blah
distribution
homogenization
utility value
- When we cut them down they
- The idea that something beyond value doesn't make things clearer.
- Whereas money ecosystems and economic systems
- It also hides the inconvenient complexities knowingly overlooked for balancing the books.
- The actual value of an urban tree comes from understanding how the tree affects the environment where it grows, including carbon sequestration and storage, storm water attenuation,
We see trees as individuals
- We have come to admire trees in Europe since picturesque landscape paintings became fashionable in the 18th century.
The Big Picture
reducing air pollution.
Local councils
- Local councils reductionist trees in terms of numbers, locations and amenity value trees that justifies urban tree planting and maintenance budgets.
urban climate adaptation
cool the local air temperature (shade and evaporation)
reduce flooding by intercepting rainfall
capture carbon dioxide emissions
lower air pollution
reduce water pollution from rainwater runoff
make cities more attractive
Those budgets are under increasing pressure, of course. increasing responsibility on councils, planners, landscapers and management companies to report on and reduce their carbon emissions.
The amount of carbon dioxide trees sequester from the atmosphere depends not only on the species of tree, but also on its age, size and health, as well as its location and exposure to light, among other. Trees also sequester carbon at different rates over their lifetime. The value of one tree can be over 100 times the value of another tree. This is a surprising yet understandable fact which most carbon offset methodologies do not sufficiently account for, since they use averages to calculate a tree’s impact over long time periods.
In business terms, trees grow in size and performance (as above) needing virtually no additional financial investment, so they functions according to the Law of increasing returns (fossil fuels extraction runs according to the Law of Diminishing returns).