Money has become omnipotent. It is used to measure the value of life and increasingly so to determine the cost of death. Economists have been trying to assign monetary value to every living and non-living objects. Just the other day an American paid $350,000 Namibian authorities to hunt an endangered black rhino saying the amount was enough to compensate for the loss and would help raise awareness about wildlife and boost efforts to save the species from extinction.

Of course, the American national has received scathing criticism and death threats as conservationists and wildlife lovers have reacted to the hunt of one of the most endangered species. But then the power of money has not been lost on anyone.

Before this news saddened and angered people across the world, some researchers assigned monetary values to some of Mother Earth's most important ecosystems. Their contention is that the exercise will help prioritize conservation efforts and funding. They have described the research into the services rendered by our ecosystems as "the benefits people derive from ecosystems - the support of sustainable human well-being that ecosystems provide". Placing financial values on environmental resources, they say, will help raise awareness about the importance of ecosystems and biodiversity.

If their view sounds similar to with that of the American hunter, it is more than coincidental. But more shocking are the absurdly small financial values they have assigned to the nine ecosystems. For instance, the worth of tropical forests is only $2,335 per hectare, prompting the questions: How can the ecosystem that is home to half of the plant and animal species despite covering only 6 percent of the Earth's land surface be worth just more than a couple of thousand dollars. Are the food and pharmaceuticals the tropical forests provide worth only a pittance? How can one place a value on such forests' biodiversity and climate stabilization properties?

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