The Importance Of The Natural Environment

As the economy emerges from recession, attention has shifted to returning the Pacific to sustainable and durable economic growth. In this context, challenges such as averting dangerous climate change and evidence that we may be approaching or exceeding other environmental limits have focused attention on the environment, specifically in terms of: ensuring environmental assets are available to improve wellbeing and to facilitate future economic growth; and managing the risks to growth from adverse environmental events. The natural environment plays a key role in our economy, as a direct input into production and through the many services it provides. Environmental resources such as minerals and fossil fuels directly facilitate the production of goods and services. The environment provides other services that enable economic activity, such as sequestering carbon, filtering air and water pollution, protecting against flood risk, and soil formation. It is also vital for our wellbeing, providing us with recreational opportunities, improving our health, and much more. Economic growth, in turn, is important for the prosperity and wellbeing of the economy and its citizens in both advanced economies and in the developing world. It stimulates advances in technology, such as those that will be needed to continue decoupling consumption and production from their environmental impacts. It is also an important factor in enabling other drivers of wellbeing, such as improvements in health,