Cheaper in long run to save planet's biodiversity: report

Rwanda uses its military to help manage the gorillas' territory. Photo / Aardvark Safaris

Saving the Earth's biodiversity from the crisis engulfing it will cost far less than letting it disappear, a radical new report will reveal today.

The rapid decline of species and habitats is depriving the planet of enormous and essential economic benefits, which in some cases will be impossible to replace once they are gone, according to the Teeb report, which is being unveiled at the United Nations biodiversity conference in Nagoya in Japan.

The report - the acronym of which stands for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity - aims to do for the planet's threatened wildlife and ecosystems what the celebrated Stern report of 2006 did for climate change - to show the economics of the problem are vital and that the costs of not solving it will be far greater than taking action.

This year it has become evident that the international community's target of halting biodiversity loss across the world by this year has not remotely been met and that losses of species are continuing largely unchecked.

Habitats crucial for human survival, directly or not, such as coral reefs and rainforests, are also under pressure. One in five plants, one in five mammals, one in seven birds and one in three amphibians are now globally threatened with extinction.

Conservationists hope that the Teeb report, the lead author of which is London-based Indian banker and economist Pavan Sukhdev, may convince the international community to take the threat to the world's natural systems and species seriously.

Three years in preparation, the report is based on the increasingly influential idea of "ecosystem services", which highlights the fact that a rainforest, for example - far from being just a wildlife theme park - plays a vital role in producing oxygen and fresh water for human society and in storing the carbon emissions which we produce and which are causing global climate change.

Many other threatened ecosystems and species - from mangrove swamps to honey bees - provide similar essential services which have been taken for granted.

There have already been five preliminary Teeb reports, addressed to economists, ecologists, local governments, business and citizens. The final synthesis of these studies, Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature, is being unveiled at Nagoya today.

The report is expected to say the ratio of the costs of saving ecosystems to the benefits of doing so range from 1:10 right up to 1:100.

Sukhdev has echoed Lord Stern's celebrated remark that climate change was "the greatest market failure ever" - because the costs of the damage were not reflected in the price of what caused it, such as burning coal.

He said this year that 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 UN Convention of Biodiversity (CBD) was signed in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro - the same meeting which saw the signature of the UN climate convention.

Yet while the climate treaty and its concerns have risen to the top of the international agenda, the issue of biodiversity loss has been the poor relation in terms of international politics.

The abject and widespread failure to meet this year's target is evidence enough.

The hope now is that the 193 countries meeting in Nagoya will agree on a new strategic plan to halt biodiversity loss.

Yet to do this effectively will cost billions, if not trillions, of dollars, not least because - as was highlighted in last week's Living Planet report by the World Wide Fund for Nature - much of the planet's worst biodiversity loss is happening in the poorest countries, which cannot afford extensive networks of protected areas.

Rwanda uses its military to help manage the gorillas' territory.



THE HARD ECONOMICS OF NATURE

MOUNTAIN GORILLAS

A very basic example of the economics of biodiversity being used for benefit is shown by the Government of Rwanda and its management of tourists who wish to see the country's mountain gorillas. Visits in the Volcanoes National Park are limited to parties of eight at a time but even so, 20,000 tourists go "gorilla trekking" every year, getting close to the animals in the wild for fees of US$500 ($661), which gives the Government US$10 million a year in hard foreign currency. For a fraction of this cost, Rwanda uses its Army to safeguard tourists and prevent local people from expanding into the gorillas' habitat and killing them.

RAINFORESTS

Rainforests are being cut down for a one-off harvest of timber - yet their potential value as stores of carbon, providers of fresh water, soil stabilisation, eco-tourism and food, fuel and fibre, is immensely greater. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) report estimates that an investment of US$45 billion in protected areas could secure nature-based services worth US$5 trillion per year.

TIGERS IN INDIA

A key example of the economic potential of biodiversity failing to be realised is that of India's tigers. India has not properly protected this species, which could be an enormous tourist revenue earner, and from an estimated 100,000 in 1900, the population is now listed at about 1400, although experts believe the number may be half that. The main reason for their decline has been the continuing illegal trade of tiger parts for Chinese medicine.

CORAL REEFS

Coral reefs are being destroyed through overfishing, coral harvesting for tourist curios, pollution and rising sea temperatures. Yet the TEEB report estimates that 500 million people depend on them and the ecosystem services they provide, ranging from coastal defence to fish nurseries, are worth up to US$170 billion annually.

- INDEPENDENT