Events & Resources

The Economic Benefits of Ecological Restoration (Guidance from Unlikely Places)

Thursday, October 23, 2025

ERI’s John Giordanengo was honored to have given the closing session for the National Stream Restoration Conference in Baltimore this October. Conference Website.

Abstract: Ecological restoration emerged in the 20th century as a thriving industry, structured to hasten the recovery of damaged ecosystems, and essential to maintaining the essential balance between humanity and nature on Earth. Restoration occurs in conservation areas (forest lands, agricultural lands, and open space sites where economic uses are allowed) and in preservation areas (wilderness and other areas where economic uses such as logging, mining, and energy production are not allowed). In developed countries such as the U.S. restoration is enabled by great financial investment, amounting to US $9.5 billion in 2014, and over US $50 billion more in the past decade. The U.S. restoration industry is largely tied to state and federal regulatory requirements, funding from private landowners, and tax-based programs at local levels. In many developing countries (Mexico, Sri Lanka, Colombia), ecological restoration is challenged due to lack of regulatory requirements and/or funding.

In a future of increasing population and growing demands on conservation and preservation areas, coupled with increasing economic turbulence (uncertainty), the capacity of the ecological restoration industry to fulfill its critical niche will be tested to new limits. The current gap between the amount of investment needed to restore degraded ecosystems, and the investment actually occurring, must shrink. Concepts such as carbon credits and biodiversity credits, have struggled to fill the gap, and may remain ineffective to the extent the structure of the global market economy does not reward them. Novel tools must be developed.

This talk draws from pattern recognition and cross-cutting analysis to identify three foundational (governing) components common to ecosystems and economies—diversity, energy, and trade. Understanding the interaction of these components, and how to manage them to balance humanity’s economic systems with Earth’s ecological systems—may be the greatest challenge of our time. Can this systems knowledge also be applied to reshape our ecological restoration industry in a way that fills the investment gap with direct economic value?