What a Living Whale Is Worth -- and Why the Economy Should Protect Nature | Ralph Chami | TED

In 2017, I confided in a dear friend of mine

that my lifelong wish was to see the blue whales.

Before I knew it, I found myself with a bunch of researchers

in the Sea of Cortez studying the blue whales.

We used to be in a boat 25 foot long.

And next to us ...

is this majestic creature

feeding gracefully next to us.

Now you have to understand, at that point in time,

I knew nothing about blue whales, or whales in general.

I'm just a financial economist.

But I learned something from them, which was really incredible.

It was already known in the science that whales capture so much carbon

on their body and indirectly.

And that's, of course, very important for us

because we are all facing the climate calamity

and we are all talking about how to grab carbon dioxide

from the atmosphere.

Well, it turns out that the whales

grab so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere --

by the way, they eat and they poop.

Yeah. It's all about food.

So how does the whale system work?

Well, it starts in the oceans.

There's these microscopic organisms called phytoplankton.

Those phytoplankton do something really incredible.

They grab so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,

and they return oxygen to all of us.

Now how much carbon dioxide do they grab from the atmosphere?

About 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Truly the lungs of the planet are in the ocean.

Now, if you want to visualize what 37 gigatons mean,

that's the equivalent of the carbon

that is grabbed by four Amazon forests per year.

That's how much is being sucked in by these photosynthetic organisms.

Now larger creatures called krill

love to eat phytoplankton directly or indirectly.

And the whales love to feed on the krill.

They feed so much on the krill that they grow bigger and bigger,

and they store carbon in their body.

How much carbon do they store in their body?

Roughly about seven to nine tons of carbon on their body.

If you want to convert that to carbon dioxide,

that's about 33 tons of carbon dioxide being kept out of the atmosphere

on the body of a single whale.

If you want to visualize that,

that’s the work of 1,500 trees

on the body of a single whale.

OK?

But those guys, because they eat a lot,

what do you do next?

You poop a lot.

And their poop turns out to be incredibly important

because it fertilizes the phyto.

So you have this wonderful cycle.

OK? The whale feeds on the krill, the krill feeds on the phyto,

and the phyto eats the poop of the whales to get more active.

And when the phyto gets more active,

it grabs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

So just imagine: the whales, they capture carbon on their body.

Unfortunately, at some point they die,

and they're so heavy they sink to the bottom of the ocean.

And anything below a thousand meters is sequestered almost forever.

And through their poop they also fertilize phyto,

making phyto even more active,

grabbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

So in a sense, the whales are incredible allies

in the fight against climate change.

Now that's good news, right? Yeah.

Except that whales are dying.

They're dying from ship strikes.

They're dying from pollution, they're dying from entanglements.

In fact, they're dying because our current economic system

puts a zero value on a living whale.

But chop a whale, sell it for its meat, it acquires a value.

The value of a living whale is zero, zero dollars,

zero in any currency.

I'm a financial economist.

And I'm listening to these scientists bemoaning what's happening to the whales.

And I wanted to help. I didn't know how to help.

And I thought, wait a minute.

Maybe I can bring your message to the audiences around the world.

Maybe I can translate all of that value, those services they do for us

in a language that we can all understand.

Unfortunately, it's a language of dollars and cents.

So I set out with my team to value the services of a whale

but one service -- because the whales do a whole host of things.

But I just wanted to value one thing,

which is what is the value

of their carbon sequestration service to us?

Now how would you do something like that? After all, the whale is a living system.

The whale captures carbon on her body,

and she gives birth to baby whales

who also grow up to capture carbon on their body.

And they give birth to whales and so forth,

and indirectly through the fertilization of phyto.

So how would you do something like this?

Well, to do that,

I had to resort to what I do best, which is valuation.

I looked at it, I said, wait a minute.

This looks like a share of stock that pays dividends.

Except those dividends are live dividends. They give birth to more dividends.

So if I were to track the whale over her lifetime

and keep track of all these dividends

into the future,

and then multiply that by the price of carbon,

and discount that all the way to the present,

I can figure out what is the present value,

discounted present value,

of the lifetime earnings of a single whale.

Would you like to know how much?

(Applause)

Would you like to know how much?

Audience: Yes!

RC: At least three million dollars.

At least.

Because I'm leaving so much out of this.

But I just wanted to tell the good news that I heard on that boat.

I didn't know what to do. I was trying to help them out.

But there's more good news. Would you like to hear it?

Audience: Yes!

RC: Their cousins on land, the elephants in the forests of Africa,

in the Congo Basin,

they do the same thing.

Turns out the way they walk and they eat and they poop,

they increase carbon sequestration in the trees, in the forests

between seven and 14 percent.

Just imagine, just by frolicking around,

they're helping us to grab carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fix it.

So I thought, hey, maybe, maybe we can value their services to.

Right? Same thing.

But again, use the same model of valuation.

You follow the same methodology,

and you discount all of that to the present.

And you ask yourself, what is the value

of a single elephant's carbon sequestration service?

Would you like to know how much?

Audience: Yes!

RC: Here we go.

2.6 million dollars.

Would you like to hear some more good news?

Audience: Yes!

RC: Aside from forests --

because we are land people, we just think of forests --

go a little bit into the water.

Seagrass, saltmarsh mangroves, kelp forests, peatlands, wetlands --

these are living systems that suck in so much carbon dioxide

beyond your imagination,

and they keep it forever in their roots

as long as you leave them alone and you look after them.

So ...

If you think these numbers are big,

wait till you see what I'm about to tell you next.

In seagrass alone,

seagrass alone, carbon sequestration.

How much do you think is the value of the global --

If you look at globally the seagrass

and you value their carbon sequestration service,

how much you think it's worth?

You ready?

2.3 trillion dollars.

That's the size of the German stock market.

Now.

What does this tell us?

This tells us that a living and thriving nature

is not only valuable intrinsically,

it's also financially valuable to us.

Question is, what do you do with this?

So the science tells us what a wondrous Earth we are on.

We can value it in dollars and cents.

Question is, what are you going to do with it?

Well, guess what? We can build a whole economy

around a living and thriving nature,

not an extractive view of nature,

but a regenerative view of nature.

And that economy --

(Applause)

Thank you.

That economy is going to deliver for us sustainable and shared prosperity

for all, big and small, all creatures on this planet.

It does not have to be I win, you lose.

It is a win-win.

I'm going to show you how.

From there we can build --

In order to build that economy, we need three things.

We need the science, the accounting, the scientific accounting.

What is it that you have? How much of it do you have?

Then people like me, financial economists, come around and they say,

"What is the value of what you have?"

The reason we value it is just to basically translate it

into the language that policymakers can understand

so they can make decisions.

That's all. It's a translation.

But then the third pillar is very important,

which is the legal framing.

The legal framing is very important

because we need to protect the rights of nature,

a living and thriving nature.

Three things. Once you do these three things,

you can create markets around nature.

When I say markets around nature,

not an extractive view of nature, but a regenerative view of nature.

And I'm going to show you how.

I'm going to show you how.

Gabon has 57,000 elephants.

If you leave them alone, they can grow to 195,000 elephants.

Gabon can sell the carbon offsets of its elephants.

Imagine -- because those elephants are grabbing carbon in the trees --

they can sell the carbon offsets of their elephants.

To whom?

To us because we're all enamored

with going carbon zero, carbon negative, carbon neutral.

And our money will come in to look after these elephants in perpetuity.

OK? So how much revenue can Gabon get out of it?

One billion dollars a year from allowing these elephants to frolic freely,

not be tied to anything,

just by leaving them alone.

Those elephants, by the way, they walk, they poop,

just being, having babies, doing whatever they do,

they help carbon sequestration in the forests.

A forest without animals is dead.

It's not about flora. It's about flora and fauna.

It's about nature itself.

That's what the message is.

Who would buy these carbon offsets?

All these companies and countries

that made commitments to carbon zero, carbon negative, carbon neutral.

They would buy the carbon offsets, or carbon credits if you like.

The money would flow in from these ecosystem services --

be it the whales, be it the elephants, be it mangrove, seagrass, saltmarsh --

and the money goes in by contract,

using blockchain technology to look after nature in perpetuity --

very important --

and to look after the stewards of nature in perpetuity.

And the stewards of nature are the local and the indigenous population.

They're the ones who are doing the conservation, not you and me.

(Applause)

Once we do that --

Notice what it is.

It's a win for nature.

It's a win for the economy.

The government will make money

because the government is going to get all that revenue.

It will change its fiscal stance.

It will diversify its economy. It will grow in a sustainable way.

It's a win for the environment.

It's a win for all of these creatures that have suffered so much at our hands.

It’s a win for this beautiful Earth of ours.

As Carl Sagan once said,

“The only Earth we’ll ever know.

The only home we'll ever know."

It's a win for us.

We are taking this work

in Africa to Liberia, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa.

We're taking this work to the Americas, Chile, Argentina.

We're doing it in the US and in the UK.

Imagine, it just started with just a wish of mine to see a blue whale.

Little did I know it's going to end up with a vision

of how we ought to live for tomorrow.

Thank you.

(Applause)