A panel discussion was held yesterday evening at the Judge Business School in Cambridge, entitled ‘The price of extinction: what losing biodiversity costs’. The event was part of the Cambridge Science Festival, in collaboration with Cambridge Conservation Initiative and Science Magazine.

Tim Radford from The Guardian opened the discussion by highlighting the global scale of biodiversity loss: one eighth of birds, 13% of flowering plants and one quarter of mammals are currently at risk of extinction. The panel members were asked in turn to give their opinions on the most important issues for biodiversity conservation.

Dr Hazell Thompson from Birdlife International and Dr Ruth Swetnam from the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, were in agreement that a valuation system for biodiversity is required. Dr Thompson explained that biodiversity conservation often loses out because it is not practically valuable to the people who actually bear the cost of protecting biodiversity. For example, constructing mines in the rainforest in West Africa has a greater economic benefit for local people than protecting the rainforest. Dr Swetnam detailed the main physical resources that are provided by biodiversity, such as food, fuel and climate regulation, and concluded that if we don’t assign monetary value to biodiversity then the value will in effect be zero, and this will inevitably lead to biodiversity loss. In contrast, in the view of William Kendall from Green and Black’s, assigning value to biodiversity will not work in the world of business because business values immediate profits, so the benefits of biodiversity conservation are not considered because they are remote and poorly calculated. In his view, biodiversity conservation can only be incorporated into business through regulation, whether this is through external regulation such as government incentives, or self-regulation through customer pressure. Although valuation and regulation were presented in the debate as opposing views, perhaps they could go hand-in-hand: valuing biodiversity could be an important factor in implementing regulation.

Pamela Abbott, chair of Cambridge Conservation Forum, put forward the point that there could be huge benefits to human health of protecting biodiversity, which would reduce government spending on healthcare. For example, a 10% increase in local green space can increase life expectancy by five years. She brought the issue of biodiversity loss down to a local scale, using the catchphrase ‘Extinction begins at home’, and suggested that individuals can have a significant input into conserving biodiversity through making wildlife gardens.

Professor Bill Adams from the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, talked about the issue of how much biodiversity we actually need. He mentioned the recent paper published in Nature on Planetary Boundaries, in which Johan Röckstrom defined limits for the capacity of the planet to cope with anthropogenic changes, including biodiversity loss. Professor Adams suggested that the particular boundaries which are considered to be important by rich countries might differ from those which are important to poor countries, such as those supporting food production. This issue was also raised in the discussion afterwards, bringing up the fact that most of the initiatives for conservation of biodiversity come from the developed world, while most of the remaining biodiversity is in developing countries. Dr Ruth Swetnam put it plainly, saying that since the UK has already cut down most of its trees, we are not in a good position to tell the inhabitants of developing countries to keep their trees when they have families to feed. Perhaps biodiversity conservation will take a different angle if more people from developing countries become involved.

The Natural Capital Initiative has published an article for comment on the ‘Future Countryside’ website. Future Countryside has been established by the Shadow Environment Secretary, Conservative MP Nick Herbert, to debate new ideas in environment policy.

In the article members of the Natural Capital Initiative, a partnership between the Society of Biology, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the British Ecological Society, discuss whether movements towards valuing biodiversity and ecosystem services represent a paradigm shift amongst policy-makers and within the scientific community. Yet, say the NCI, policy is running far ahead of the ability to put an accurate ‘price’ on nature. The article calls for an approach which integrates monetary and other approaches to valuation as a way forward which reflects the true worth of society’s natural capital.

Have your say on the points raised in the article on the Future Countryside website.

On 11th February the meeting “Is Biodiversity really under pressure?” was held at the Linnean Society. This was a joint meeting between the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the Linnean Society of London, organised by Dr Peter Bridgewater FLS (JNCC) and Dr Sandy Knapp FLS.

The meeting included speeches by guest speakers on five categories of pressure that were identified in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Habitat Loss, Pollution, Climate Change, Non- Native Species and Over Exploitation.

Following the speeches, the audience were asked to vote on the issues that had been raised which they considered the most important. The top results of this poll were as follows:

1. It is important to expand measures of wealth to incorporate natural capital
2. We should ‘disobey God’ by limiting reproduction in order to tackle overpopulation.
3. It is important to determine the impacts on ecosystem functioning and services and not just single species.

The meeting concluded with an address by Professor Bob Watson from Defra, who emphasised the consideration of multiple drivers of biodiversity loss, the importance of an ecosystem-based approach and the valuation of natural capital, among other issues.

The concept of monetising biodiversity, generating a ‘net present value’ for a polar bear or a ‘discount rate’ for seasonally dry tropical forest, might fill ecologists and conservationists with dread. Still reeling from the after-effects of the financial crisis, do we really trust the bankers to decide what is a sensible investment in our ecosystems? One man has been brave enough try – Pavan Sukhdev, a leading banker in Deutsche Bank, special advisor to the UN Green Economy Initiative, and study leader of TEEB, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, a ground-breaking report due for publication this autumn which aims to do just that.

Pavan Sukhdev addressed a packed audience last night at the SAID Business School, Oxford, at the 5th Oxford Earthwatch Lecture, jointly organised with the think tank SustainAbility. The event was co-chaired Elaine Dorward-King, Global Head of Health, Safety and the Environment at Rio Tinto, a leading mining concern with significant interests in the developing world.

Mr Sukhdev’s key question was to ask whether corporations can keep being profitable, and governments keep growing GDP, without measuring impacts on natural and human capital? Through excellent examples, he demonstrated the need to ‘internalise the externalities’; in other words, counting the cost of natural resources such as fresh water, clean air and an amenable climate which are normally taken for granted. A good case-study is the Rio de la Plata Basin, dubbed the granary of Latin America, which is worth about a trillion dollars per year. Rainfall in the Basin is dependant on water cycling provided by the Amazon Rainforest, but farmers pay nothing for the water supplied by intact rainforest. Pavan Sukhdev described this as the ‘economic invisibility of nature’. He requested that corporations begin to disclose their impacts on natural and human capital on their balance sheets, not just absolve them in a Corporate Social Responsibility report. Elaine Dorward-King, the representative from Rio Tinto, promised to take this on board.

Mr Sukhdev continued to describe the results of valuing natural capital insufficiently. Ecosystems generate wealth indirectly that is not valued but can be large, for example a mangrove forest could generate over $10,000/ha/yr through providing fish and storm protection. The cost of restoring a mangrove forest after it has been cut down is also non-significant. Weighing these two up over 40 years gives the internal rate of return on initial investment to maintain ecosystems, which for mangroves is 40% and for grasslands, 70%. To put this in perspective, your bank account is probably around 1%. For this reason, Mr Sukhdev stated that the economics can not only save wild nature, but wild nature could also save the economy.

Pavan Sukhdev addressed a packed audience in Westminister at a parliamentary event organised by the BES and Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management in October 2009. Find out more about this under ‘Policy Meetings and Events’ on the BES website.

David Dickson, Director of SciDev.net, has written a very interesting piece on the network’s website, discussing the importance of effective science communication in stemming the loss of biodiversity. He states that scientists and others working to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change face ‘formidable challenges’ in presuading political leaders and the public to take action. In part, he says, the failure to tackle biodiversity loss effectively to date, missing the 2010 biodiversity target to achieve “a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss”, is due to poor communication on the part of scientists and the media.

Mr Dickson criticises the scientific community for poorly articulating the importance of biodiversity to decision-makers, relating it to people’s everyday lives and concerns. New targets agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan, in October this year, must be accompanied by a ’sophisticated communications strategy’ to avoid a continuation of this mistake. ‘Biodiversity’ as a term is itself flawed, he argues, lacking concreteness which could galvanise public support. In moving forwards, the piece argues, scientists should firm up the science behind an understanding of biodiversity and its importance and must embed this science in viable, sustainable, economic growth and development strategies. Media coverage must relate biodiversity to people’s concerns such as jobs, health and food.

The BES and Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management launched a position statement on halting UK biodiversity loss in October 2009. Read more here.

India’s Prime Minister has today announced that India will boost its contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA) will provide research findings to the IPCC by November 2010, informing its next Assessment Report, due in 2014. The involvement of INCCA will represent the first time that Indian scientists have contributed to the IPCC at an institutional level.

The focus of INCCA’s work will be on measuring, modelling and monitoring to assess the impact of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, health and agriculture, amongst other key sectors.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh commented that this development would bring science “back into the mainstream” of the Department’s work and decision-making.

SciDev.Net, 8 February, India boosts climate data contribution to IPCC, T. V. Padma

According to a report published on 4th February by the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology and Pond Conservation, 80% of ponds in England and Wales are in a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ condition, thus failing to provide vital habitat for aquatic plants and animals. These findings are particularly worrying given that reports by the Environment Agency last autumn showed that 75% of UK rivers will fail to meet new European biological standards. Although large numbers of new ponds are created each year in the UK, many of these ponds are located in agricultural areas and suffer from pollution by nutrient run-off. This eventually results in overgrowth of vegetation and stagnant water. In contrast, the report found that ponds close to rivers, streams and other wetlands are in much better condition. These results highlight the importance of developing future ponds in areas that are protected from pollution, in order to protect Britain’s future freshwater biodiversity.

Pond Conservation Press Release: First national survey shows Britain’s wildlife ponds are in a ‘terrible state’

Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for the Environment, has called for world leaders to identify a way to price the impact of their decisions on biodiversity. The Guardian reports that, in a speech outlining Labour manifesto thinking, Mr Benn praised the TEEB review (the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) currently being prepared by a team led by Pavan Sukhdev of Deutsche Bank, as making a vital contribution to our understanding of the natural world and how to conserve it; “the report presented by Sukhdev can do for our understanding of the natural world what Nick Stern did for the understanding of climate change”, said Mr Benn, alluding to the report by Lord Stern into the economics of climate change.

Mr Benn’s speech encouraged politicians to think about the most effective mechanism for taking account of the economic decisions we make in relation to their impact on biodiversity. He called for society to begin to live within environmental limits and stressed the need for a body equivalent to the Independent Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for biodiversity. The scientific and policy communities are already advanced in thinking about what such a body, the Independent Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) might look like.

In a speech today to Progress Mr Benn is expected to say that the world is going through its sixth major extinction event, but that this is going largely unnoticed. He will call for greater optimism in man’s ability to tackle the environmental challenges we face and to improve the environment.

Original article: Benn to call on world leaders to adopt biodiversity pricing, Patrick Wintour, 25 January 2010

The UN International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) was officially launched today, with an opening ceremony held in Berlin. Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen officially opened the IYB at 10.00am GMT.

Marking the launch of the IYB with a piece on the Guardian website today is Dr Bob Bloomfield, co-ordinator for the International Year of Biodiversity UK activities and network, of which the BES is a member. In his piece, Dr Bloomfield emphasises the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to the health and well-being of the human population, particularly the poor. Drawing attention to the TEEB (The Economics and Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity) review, led by Pavan Sukhdev of the UN Environment Programme, Dr Bloomfield highlights the economic catastrophe which will befall society should destruction of the natural world result in a loss of fundamental ecosystem services; this would be of an order of magnitude greater than the global economic crisis.

Pavan Sukhdev was a guest speaker at a parliamentary reception in October 2009, organised by the BES and Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, at which both organisations launched a position statement on the role of science and professionalism in conserving biodiversity beyond 2010.

Signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity will gather in Nagoya, Japan, later this year to discuss performance against the target to slow declines in biodiversity by 2010 (the ‘2010 biodiversity target’) and formulate a successor. It’s widely acknowledged that countries have failed to meet this goal: robust action will therefore be needed to meet any targets developed for 2020.

The IYB-UK partnership is made up of over 200 organisations, drawn from diverse sectors, committed to using 2010 to make a difference for biodiversity conservation. You can find out more about the International Year of Biodiversity and IYB – UK at the IYB-UK website: www.biodiversityislife.net.

A team of individuals, including representatives of NGOs, academics, learned societies and professional horizon scanners has identified fifteen issues which could affect the conservation of biodiversity in the near future. The group, led by Professor Bill Sutherland of Cambridge University, and which included the BES Policy Officer, met in September this year to discuss a number of issues and shortlist those thought to not yet be on the radar for conservationists. Professor Sutherland intends that the exercise be run annually, in order to identify emerging issues in sufficient time to allow time to initiate research and develop policy and practical responses.

The paper defines horizon scanning as ‘the systematic search for incipient trends, opportunities and risks which may affect the probability of achieving management goals and objectives’. Over the course of 2009, those involved in the exercise collated a number of examples of novel threats and opportunities for biodiversity. These were then ranked by the group in advance of the September meeting, to prepare a shortlist which was then debated at the meeting itself.

Issues outlined in the paper include ’synthetic meat’; using techniques developed for bioengineering medical tissue to grow synthetic meat in the laboratory. Should synthetic meat become commonplace and livestock production move away from field to factory, this could result in a redution in greenhouse gases from agriculture but also consequences for vegetation dependent on livestock grazing. The growth in mobile-sensing technology is also highlighted, due to the opportunities that the growth of ‘apps’, or applications, for mobile phones could open for a wide range of individuals to engage with conservation, for species recognition and recording of information about species. Other issues highilighted include ’stratospheric aerosols’, ‘deoxygenation of the oceans’ and ‘large-scale international land acquisitions.’

The list of fifteen issues is not meant to be exhaustive and nor are the issues ranked in order of importance. The list is aimed at stimulating discussion and debate within the conservation and policy communities. Through leading this exercise, Professor Sutherland hopes to encourage conservation professionals to give greater attention to speculative or little-known issues, rather than focusing, as traditionally, on issues of well-recognised importance. Conservation issues may be better accomodated in policy and management if identified early.

Sutherland, W.J. et al. A horizon scan of global conservation issues for 2010. TREE (Published online, 24 November 2009)