Nature, Inc., the path-breaking documentary series that puts a price-tag on environmental services such as forests and wildlife, is now available from TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP).

Broadcast, civil society and educational users across the Asia Pacific may order copies at the cost of duplication and dispatch, and without having to pay a license fee.

The first and second series have been made available by TVEAP’s global partners dev.tv and One Planet Pictures, and just been added to our international catalogue of development films from all over the world.

Each series comprises six half-hour episodes, compacting cutting edge stories of discovery, research and business practices from around the world.

Nature Inc. offers new insights into valuing the benefits of natural systems and biodiversity. It takes its lead from economists who have worked out that ecosystem services are worth more than the total of all the world’s national economies.

First broadcast in 2008 and 2009 on BBC World News, Nature Inc. broke new ground for environmental programming by seeking out a new breed of investor – those who believe they can make money out of saving the planet.

“There is new green thinking out there and some of it is grappling with pricing renewable assets. As such we felt it was a legitimate new area to take as an organising theme for the new series,” says Robert Lamb, series producer of Nature, Inc. "Perhaps the global recession has made viewers more aware of the ‘eco’ in economics".

He adds: “We worked closely with some of the leading experts in the environmental and economics field to bring you the most up-to-the-minute information about the future of Green Business.”

Among the new studies the series sums up is the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.  

TEEB estimated that we are losing over US$4 trillion in ‘ecosystem services’ every year due to habitat destruction. Interviewed by Nature, Inc., the TEEB study leader (and a former Deutsche Bank manager), Pavan Sukhdev, says: "These sums are staggering and represent the real credit crunch."

One programme in Series 2 features the benefits that can be derived from copying Nature's inventions for commercial ends: everything from sharks to sponges to brittle fish. “Nature has spent billions of years developing how to do the most with the least”, comments one scientist interviewed.

Adds Nature Inc. executive producer Bernard Robert Charrue: "There's just one problem, just as scientists are being ‘bio inspired’ so the living products of evolution are being squandered in our people-made extinction event.”

"In all the programmes, Nature Inc. addresses the conundrum that while everyone accepts that conservation has an economic value, the unregulated free market cannot really fix a workable monetary value on ecosystem services," says Lamb, a veteran of environmental programming for 25 years. "But what is interesting is that the green calculations of wealth that 10 years ago would have been dismissed out of hand by most establishment economists are now widely accepted. "The root of the word 'economy' is 'ecology', perhaps it's all turning full circle?"

Read Robert Lamb’s reflections on the Making of Nature, Inc.

The secondary distribution of Nature, Inc. is particularly timely during 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB). The UN-designated year is a celebration of biological diversity and its value for life on Earth

Nature Inc, Series 1 Six eye-opening episodes reveal just how much nature is worth to our economy: the honeybee population crash threatening the $2billion almond industry in California; preserved watersheds that provide renewable power and clean water to vital industries; coral reefs that are worth $30 billion a year; mangroves that save lives; and invasive species that cost the global economy staggering $1.4 trillion a year.

Nature Inc, Series 2 Since life so mysteriously emerged from the chemistry of a new planet billions of years ago, nature has been experimenting. Humankind has failed to put a price tag on the services nature provides. The result is that estimates of economic growth take no account of the destruction of ecosystems, even though - for example - in disappearing fish stocks the economic costs are obvious. Nature Inc. breaks new ground in assessing the financial benefits of conserving ecological processes.

Photos from Nature Inc. website & TVEAP Image Archive