How ecosystems contribute to Colombia’s energy and water sectors

The ecosystems of Colombia’s Upper Sinú Basin contribute approximately $100 million worth of erosion control services to the region’s energy and water sectors—benefits that the Colombian government worries are increasingly threatened by cattle ranching, illegal timber harvesting, and agricultural expansion.

To better protect nature and support the economic livelihood of residents, the Colombian National Planning Department partnered with a team of researchers from the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and other institutions to conduct one of the first assessments linking upstream watersheds with downstream economic development. The assessment utilized natural capital accounting, which attempts to identify the benefits that natural assets provide to people and how those change over time in a way that aligns with other accounting systems used by governments.

A recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment details the findings, not only quantifying the value of existing benefits but also revealing that construction of a proposed aqueduct would increase the value of existing ecosystem services by 12 percent. The publication was co-authored by Alejandra Echeverri, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management who was involved in the project as part of her postdoctoral researcher position at Stanford.

“The appeal of a natural capital account is that it’s replicable and can be scaled, showing the status of nature’s benefits to people over time and potentially in response to different actions,” said Lisa Mandle, a Stanford University researcher and lead author of the paper.