Ecosystem Services and the Built Environment Significant benefits to people and other species come through the combination of natural resources (natural capital) and the built environment (built capital). The pipes of a water system (built capital) deliver the vital natural resource of clean water (natural capital) to our homes and businesses. The built environment and natural environment are completely interdependent. Buildings and the infrastructure that supports them are embedded within the natural environment and serve as a conduit and provider of certain benefits to people. Yet, an ecosystem good (e.g. fresh water supply) or service (e.g. fresh water storage) are different from the traditional economic benefits provided by labor and monetary capital that modern economies have historically valued. The built environment, if conceived and implemented to support both human and natural systems in a restorative manner, can provide similar, if not identical, benefits as ecosystem services within the urban context. The real estate development paradigm that took hold over the 20th century and continues to this day often completely undermines ecosystems services and has historically worked to degrade them to the detriment of people’s health and well being. Oddly, it is often the rules set forth by government and regulatory agencies that seek to protect people’s health and well being that have permitted this degradation to occur. Even as we were drafting this paper, the United States Congress was attempting to limit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies’ rights to regulate air pollution through the Clean Air Act. Clean Air ... one of the primary inputs to maintain life on earth! While a building may be designed and built to allow rainfall to recharge groundwater supply and avoid costly storm water charges for the owner through
integration of permeable surfaces or bio-filtration swales, a conventional building will both deplete groundwater and create unwanted storm water flows that pollute our water bodies. The infrastructure typically mandated by law and building codes to convey storm and waste water is enormously expensive to build and maintain over time. This built capital solution devised over the 19th and 20th century is outdated and depreciates both physically and monetarily with time. Taking cues from nature, one sees that a natural capital solution such as a forest’s ability to recharge groundwater has very low maintenance and operating costs and little, if any, capital costs. Similarly, a building designed to maximize groundwater recharge will usually not have costly pipes to install and maintain, thus requiring less maintenance and operating costs over time than one built with a full-blown storm water conveyance system typically required in conventional buildings. Typically only the construction, or hard, costs reflected in real estate investment models are the built capital portions, not the costs of the infrastructure required to provide the natural capital goods and services to the site. For example, built and natural capital work complimentarily to one another in providing water to our homes, schools and businesses. Pipes (built capital) are required, but are useless if there is no water (natural capital) to fill them. Current industry practice only accounts for built capital costs included in the plumbing system of a newly constructed building (built capital - pipes, pumps, drains, etc..), whereas the value of water (natural capital), water savings, and the capital costs for providing water to the building are not adequately included.