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.

Habitat banking describes the trade in habitat or biodiversity ‘credits’, i.e. areas of land where environmental restoration has taken place that can be bought to compensate for unavoidable habitat destruction through development. This concept has been in practice in the form of wetland mitigation banks in America since the 1980s, and its use is spreading as a means for governments to reduce the biodiversity loss associated with economic growth and development.

A report launched today by the organisation Ecosystem Marketplace provides a summary of the existing schemes around the world, listing 39 such projects in operation and another 25 planned in various countries. It calculates a market of between $1.8 billion and $2.9 billion per year alone from the 20% of projects that provide figures, resulting in the additional conservation management or protection of 86,000 hectares of land per year. There is increasing interest within the EU and the UK of adopting a more formalised habitat banking system, and both the EC and Defra have recently published scoping reports (available here and here) on the subject.

Download “The State of Biodiversity Markets: Offset and Compensation Programs Worldwide” report.

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.

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.

The Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme has launched formally, following the approval of the Department for International Development. The ESPA programme, a partnership between the NERC, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and DFID, was established in 2007 but the past two years have seen the development of the concept of the programme. Today, the three funders announced that funding had been agreed. The project has been formally launched under the banner of the Living With Environmental Change partnership.

Funding for the ESPA programme will total £40.5 million, combining £27 million of DFID’s development research funding together with £13.5 million of UK Research Council funding. The ESPA programme will explore the sustainable management of ecosystems and how this can contribute to poverty alleviation in developing countries.

The first call for applications has opened: Funding Stream 1 is a one-off opportunity for shorter-term, innovative, conceptual development type projects submitted as a Programme Framework grant.
Funding Stream 2 has two submission opportunities: one to win catalyst funding through a Partnership & Project Development grant, in preparation for a second submission opportunity for a larger Research Consortium grant. Further details can be found at the NERC website. The closing date for submissions is 3 March 2010.

Source: Research for Development

The report of the joint BES – UKBRAG (UK Biodiversity Research Advisory Group) workshop on ‘Developing the National Ecosystem Asssessment’ is now available to view on the BES website.

The workshop was held as a session at the BES Annual Meeting (University of Hertfordshire, 7 – 10 September 2009) and focused on bringing the UK National Ecosystem Assessment to the attention of BES members and others in the ecological science community. Presentations from the co-chair of the NEA and others were followed by discussion in break-out groups and a session reporting back to participants.

Key points to emerge from the report were: the need for the results of the NEA to be communicated to a broad audience, including the public, HM Treasury and for use in educational materials; the need for the NEA to be supported beyond the timescale currently proposed, to make sure that researchers and policy-makers are supported in efforts to use the outputs, and the need for the results of the NEA to drive future research priorities.

The latest report of the TEEB study was released on Friday, 13 November. ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for National and International Policy Makers 2009′ follows the TEEB Interim Report, released in May 2008. The next releases; ‘TEEB for Local Administrators’ and ‘TEEB for Business’ reports, will be released in summer 2010, whilst the final TEEB synthesis report will be published in time for the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in autumn next year.

The latest document is intended to highlight the relevance of the TEEB study to mainstream policy-making, providing evidence to support a strong case for policy action; concrete examples of ways to make policies work (from removing subsidies to payments for ecosystem services) and practical guidance for managing the transition during policy reform.

TEEB is built around the central point that the lack of market prices for ecosystem services and biodiversity means that the public benefits we derive from these goods are usually neglected or under-valued in decision-making. By failing to account for the value of ecosystems and biodiversity we will make the wrong choices in responding to the global challenges of climate change, food, water and energy security. Making the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services visible to economies and society is necessary to pave the way for more efficient policy responses.

Download the full report and the executive summary.

Access the TEEB website.

Prof. Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor at DEFRA, last night delivered a fascinating presentation on ‘Using the Environmental Sciences for a Sustainable Future’; taking place as the annual Institution of Environmental Sciences ‘Burntwood Lecture’, held at the Royal Society.

Over the course of an hour Professor Watson delivered a wide-ranging overview of the major challenges facing humanity in the coming years, from climate change, to food production to biodiversity loss, water quality and human security, and offered his view on how society could tackle these. Prof. Watson criticised governments for treating environmental and social challenges in isolation, creating policy silos; climate change, biodiversity loss, food, water and energy security are all interrelated and should be viewed as such. Climate change needs to be integrated into all sectorial policies and into national economic development; without this, much of the aid provided to the developing world, for example, will fail.

Prof. Watson touched upon work he had led as Director of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology (IAASTD). 40% of food harvested in developing countries never makes it to market whilst 40% of food in developed countries is wasted once it has reached the market. Reducing post-harvest lost must therefore be a priority for science and technology research. Yet Professor Watson said that we can solve today’s hunger problem, where 1 billion people go to sleep hungry each night, without major advances in science; citing Agroecology as a huge area for development and stating that many of the problems relate to disparity in distributions of food.

Prof. Watson’s talk was packed with information, far too much to do justice to here. However, it was very interesting to note his view on what needs to change in order to build a sustainable future; one where a 4 degree rise in temperature is unlikely. A price must be placed on carbon, combined with technology transformation and the mobiliation of behavioural change throughout society. Efficiency in enegy production and use will be important; a shift from coal to gas as fuel and, if coal is used, capturing and storing carbon emissions. Improving the supply of renewable energy; nuclear power and managing soils and forests more efficiently will also have key roles to play.

Prof. Watson showed a very interesting diagram towards the end of his presentation outlining how society is segmented in relation to climate change and environmental issues. Dealing with the ‘honestly disengaged’, who recognise the issues but aren’t prepared to change their own behaviour in any way, for example, requires legislation, whilst those already engaged with the issues need to be supported in their efforts. Unless policy-makers understand how society is divided, they will lack an understanding of the policy responses to use to deal with these groups.

Overall Prof. Watson highlighted the importance of good governance in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. Political will and moral leadership is needed; the UK has in some respects led the way, with the development of the world’s first ‘Climate Change Act’, but Prof. Watson said more is needed; the USA in particular needs to show leadership, bringing China and India on board with a global agreement. Technological innovation is also necessary. Finally, in a call to the scientific community Prof. Watson urged scientists to communicate with the public; engaging with their local councils, local MPs and local media, to convey key messages about the dangers of climate change and environmental degradation. People must understand, through science communicators, what the science is telling us, and what the future implications are of policy decisions to tackle these global challenges.

Delivering the tenth annual Darwin Initiative lecture in London last night, Secretary of State Hilary Benn argued that we take our natural capital for granted at our peril, and that only by putting a monetary value on ecosystems and biodiversity will we succeed in advocating for and protecting nature.

Fluently making the human case for protecting ecosystem services, Mr. Benn pointed towards the ongoing TEEB report (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) as potentially representing a turning point in wider attitudes to nature conservation. He expressed the belief that whilst 2009 has become the year of climate change, 2010 really would be the year of biodiversity, with widespread progress being made on multiple fronts.

Looking forward, the Minister argued for the creation of an IPCC-equivalent for biodiversity and expressed the UK’s strong support for current discussions regarding the establishment of a biodiversity and ecosystems services-focussed international scientific organisation. He called for a credible new biodiversity target, not only underpinned by science but also measurable by science, the importance of including biodiversity, especially forests, in any global climate change deal, and the need for a new system of marine governance. Above all however, he stated the need for better-informed policies across government, pointing towards the TEEB as a crucial means of encouraging other government departments and public bodies to take account of the true long-term costs of not conserving our natural capital.

A recent editorial in Science (Vol. 325. no. 5947, p. 1474) argues persuasively that scientists must better ensure biodiversity research information reaches decision-makers. An important opportunity to improve this knowledge transfer will present itself in October, when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) hosts a meeting in Nairobi to discuss the next steps in establishing a new science/policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Unlike the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international environmental agreements which deal with biodiversity loss, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, lack a pre-convention science assessment and have no provision for subsequent government-endorsed, independent science. Thus at present we lack information on global and local trends in most biodiversity components, as well as baselines and standards for their assessment. This is an important omission which the Nairobi meeting seeks to address.

The authors argue that the participating countries at the conference should bring their best scientists along with their best policy negotiators, for a commitment to an intergovernmental science/policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services is possible only if scientists become centrally involved. Moreover, scientists in general need to not only continue to generate the science that underlies good policies, but also to become informed on policy issues that relate to their expertise and ensure that research information reaches the relevant decision-making levels of government.