‘Ottawa’ NCC Green Spaces Provide $332M in Aannual Economic Value: Study
If you’ve ever wondered what the National Capital Commission’s 55,000 hectares of green spaces and agricultural land are worth, a study released Tuesday provides an answer — of sorts.
The study concludes that the total economic value of all natural and cultivated NCC green space averages $332 million a year. That number includes direct monetary benefits from wood and agricultural products as well as indirect environmental and health benefits.
The study also converts the annual economic value of the “ecosystem services” provided by the NCC’s lands into a total value and arrives at a figure of just over $5 billion, based on their net present value over 20 years.
However, due to methodological limitations, the estimated value “must be considered as an order of magnitude more than a precise measurement,” the study’s authors caution.