Nature provides the vital infrastructure that underpins the economy. Nature's contributions to people through the economy include the provision of the raw materials necessary to produce everything from our food to components of our mobile phones and the less immediately obvious but supremely important regulation of environmental conditions, which impact everything from climate and ocean conditions to water supplies and soil fertility.
Stephen Polasky is the Fesler-Lampert professor of ecological and environmental economics at the University of Minnesota. Matt Jones is the chief impact officer at the United Nations Environment Program's World Conservation Monitoring Center.
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