In every corner of the globe the evidence of the biodiversity crisis is now impossible to ignore.
The International Union for the Conservation of
Nature (IUCN) believes one in five mammals, one in three amphibians and one in seven birds are extinct or globally threatened — and other species groups still being assessed are showing similar patterns.
Simon Stuart, a senior IUCN scientist, has warned that for the first time since dinosaurs lived, humans are driving plants and animals to extinction faster than new species can evolve.
For decades observers have watched fens being drained or noticed the decline of cuckoos in spring and butterflies in summer. But until recently these changes were overshadowed by growing fears about the impact of climate change.
However, as the impact of species and habitat losses around the world has mounted — riots over food shortages, costly floods and landslides, expensive bills for cleaning polluted water and many more disasters — attention has finally started to turn to the impact of human beings literally consuming the planet’s natural resources.
In 2007, just months after the British government made global waves with the biggest report on the economics of climate change, by Lord Stern, world governments met in Potsdam, Germany, and asked the leading economist and senior banker, Pavan Sukhdev, to do the same for the natural world.
The study, called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, shows that on average one-third of Earth’s habitats have been damaged by humans — with, for example, 85% of
seas and oceans and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland affected. It also warns that in spite of growing awareness of the danger of natural destruction it will ‘still continue on a large scale”.
Following an interim report last year, the study group will publish its final findings this summer, in advance of the global Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Japan in October, marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity.
Based on a host of academic and expert studies, the report is expected to say that the ratio of costs of conserving ecosystems or biodiversity to the economic benefits of doing so range from 1:10 to 1:100. This means a dollar spent now on conserving biodiversity pays back between $10 and $100 in the long term.
One report estimated the cost of building and maintaining a more comprehensive network of global protected areas — increasing it from the current 12.5%-14% to 15% of all land and from 1% to 30% of the seas — would be $45-billion a year, whereas the benefits of preserving the species richness within these zones would be worth $4-trillion to $5-trillion a year.
Another unpublished report for the UN by United Kingdom-based consultants Trucost claimed the combined cost of damage to the environment by the world’s 3 000 biggest companies was $2.2-trillion in 2008.
Echoing Stern’s famous description of climate change as ‘the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever”, Sukhdev — who supports action on climate change as well — said the destruction of the natural world was ‘a landscape of market failures”, because the services of nature were nearly always provided for free and so not valued until they were gone.
‘The Earth and its thin surface is our only home and there’s a lot that comes to us from biodiversity and ecosystems: we get food, fuel, fibre; we get the ability to have clean air and fresh water; we get a stable microclimate where we live; if we wander into forests and wildernesses we get enjoyment, we get recreation, we get spiritual sustenance; all kinds of things — which in many cases are received free, and I think that’s perhaps the nub of the problem,” said Sukhdev, who visited the UK as a guest of the science research and education charity, Earthwatch Institute.
Sukhdev is a senior banker at Deutsche Bank and adviser to the UN Environment Programme. He owns a rainforest restoration and ecotourism project in Australia and an organic farm in India.
The final reports, in five sections covering economic methods and advice to policymakers, administrators, businesses and citizens, will make a series of recommendations on how to turn economic values for different parts of nature — such as particular forests, wetlands, ocean habitats such as coral reefs or individual species (one example given is paying farmers to tolerate geese wintering in Scotland) — into ways to protect them.
One of the most immediate changes could be reform of direct and indirect subsidies, such as tax exemptions, which encourage overproduction even when there is clear destruction of the long-term ability of the environment to provide what is needed, and below-cost pricing, which leads to waste and poor understanding of the value of the products.
‘Particularly worrying” are about $300-billion of subsidies to agriculture and fishing; subsidies of $500-billion for energy, $238-billion to $306-billion for transport and $67-billion for water companies are also singled out.
Other suggested reforms include stricter limits on extraction and pollution; other environmental regulations such as restrictions on fishing net sizes or more damaging agricultural practices; higher penalties for breaking the limits; reform of taxes to encourage better practices; better public procurement; public funds for restoring damaged ecosystems such as reedbeds or heathlands; forcing companies that want to develop an area of land to restore or conserve another piece of land to ‘offset” the damage; and paying communities for the use of goods and services from nature — such as the proposed Redd international forestry protection scheme. Money raised by some policies could pay for others, says the report.
Sukhdev’s team also wants companies and countries to adopt new accounting systems so alongside their financial accounts of income, spending, profits and capital, they publish figures showing combined impact on environmental or natural capital, and also social capital, such as improvements in workers’ skills or national education levels.
‘We’re in a society where more is better, where we tend to reward more production and more consumption … GDP tends to get associated with progress, and that’s not necessarily the case.” —