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In this op-ed, Robert Fletcher reviews The Dasgupta Review, a report commissioned by the UK Treasury Department on The Economics of Biodiversity, which was released in February 2021. Fletcher argues that rather than offering a fresh or timely analysis of biodiversity loss and how to counter it, the Review continues a long line of similar reports that leave capitalism in the background as a given, and lay blame for what ails the world at the feet of "population." Such disavowed capital-centric Malthusianism, Fletcher argues, renders the popular report a distraction from desperately needed analyses of the political economy of biodiversity loss.

Three broad categories of transformative changes have been recommended in The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review (henceforth Review): (i) The need to address the imbalance between our demands on Nature and its supply. (ii) The need to change our measures of economic success. (iii) The need for institutional change. However, what the private citizen would like to find in the Review differs from what someone in a government department or an international agency or a private company seeks. These notes have been prompted by the many virtual meetings I have had since the Review’s launch and they further explore aspects of the Review’s recommendations.

The message from the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity is recent, loud and clear: we must fix our relationship with the natural world or destroy human prosperity, well-being and our future.The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference, hosted by the UK in partnership with Italy, was taking place from 31 October to 12 November 2021 in the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, UK. Lawyers step in. There's lots of dimensions to start this sort of discussion, and lawyers are as good as any: everything in the universe has both particle and wave nature, at the same time. All is waves, everything in the universe has wave nature. Of course, everything in the universe also has particle nature. Lawyers call for the progress of implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Lawyers call for the collaboration to evidence a growing momentum around climate action, to win in resolving the rules around carbon markets etc and to assuage vulnerable countries��� concerns about long-promised climate financing from rich nations etc, in total to change the reality. Lawyers call on to attend to our own personal development, to raise our level of consciousness. Lawyers forward the Golden Hours Idea, discussing the consequences of Lautsi v. Italy case and its importance for the current world situation., {"references":["William Simons, Emeritus Professor, Leiden University","Mikhail Antonov, Professor, HSE University"]}

This article provides an analysis of The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. The review places the study of biodiversity at the core of economics, by providing a conception that takes into account human impact in the biosphere, and planetary boundaries. This leads to a theoretical model where the human economy is bounded. Within this conception, Nature is valued as an asset, in a context where a social evaluator, or citizen investor, takes into account intergenerational wellbeing. This article discusses the methodology through which human impact in the biosphere is accounted for in the theoretical framework proposed in the review, while scrutinising the method for valuing biodiversity proposed in the review.

The Dasgupta Review provides a rich overview of the economics of biodiversity, paints a bleak picture of the current state of biodiversity, and is a call to arms for action in anticipation of the CBD COP 15. The Review takes a global perspective aimed at the high level of international and national policy on biodiversity, while elucidating the very local nature of biodiversity threats and values. The approach is orthodox in its diagnosis via the language of externalities, natural capital, shadow pricing, asset returns, and the suite of remedial policies that follow. Yet, at its centre is an ‘unorthodox’ perspective: the economy is embedded in the environment and growth is limited. We offer reflections on this framing in light of its objectives for biodiversity. The limits to growth message will be criticised and applauded in equal measure by different economists. The central place of valuation and the aggregated concept of biodiversity will draw criticism from outside the discipline. Yet the Review provides a foundation for biodiversity economics, and its largely orthodox framing may invoke the intended step change in the mainstream approach to economic growth.

This article examines biodiversity research and innovation in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean based on a review of 150,401 scientific articles and 29,690 patent families for Antarctic species. The paper exploits the growing availability of open access databases, such as the Lens and Microsoft Academic Graph, along with taxonomic data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to explore the scientific and patent literature for the Antarctic at scale. The paper identifies the main contours of scientific research in Antarctica before exploring commercially oriented biodiversity research and development in the scientific literature and patent publications. The paper argues that biodiversity is not a free good and must be paid for. Ways forward in debates on commercial research and development in Antarctica can be found through increasing attention to the valuation of ecosystem services, new approaches to natural capital accounting and payment for ecosystem services that would bring the Antarctic, and the Antarctic Treaty System, into the wider fold of work on the economics of biodiversity. Economics based approaches can be criticised for reducing biodiversity to monetary exchange values at the expense of recognition of the wider values of biodiversity and its services. However, approaches grounded in the economics of biodiversity provide a transparent framework for approaching commercial activity in the Antarctic and introducing requirements for investments in the conservation of Antarctic biodiversity by those who seek to profit from it.

Twenty years ago, the problem of biodiversity1 loss was brought to the wider public by a book with the ominous title, The Sixth Extinction (Leakey and Levin 1995, 241), referring to the fact that g...

Recent interest in the economics of biodiversity and wider ecosystem services has been given empirical expression through a focus upon economic valuation. This emphasis has been prompted by a growing recognition that the benefits and opportunity costs associated with such services are frequently given cursory consideration in policy analyses or even completely ignored. The valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is therefore increasingly seen as a crucial element of robust decision making and this has been reflected in a growing body of related research. We provide a critical review of some of this research, considering the valuation methods applied to date and focussing upon their limitations in respect to certain categories of ecosystem services (particularly cultural services) and the applicability of the extant literature to new settings. Substantial questions also remain at the interface of natural science and economics and we consider the potential contribution of the conceptualization of ecosystems as assets as a response to this challenge. As part of this review we also highlight the role which large scale ‘ecosystem assessments’ have played as an impetus to extending the valuation evidence base and the way in which frameworks and assessments of how ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing might be translated into policy thinking and decision analyses. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.

Why do conservation biologists, ecologists and other natural scientists working on environmental problems feel the need to copy, or rather parody, a narrow economic discourse? This editorial criicises this approach with reference to the UN's report The Economics of Biodiversity and the extension of tradable permits to such areas as endangered species and wetlands.

Economic evaluations are essential for assessing the desirability of biodiversity conservation. This article highlights significant advances in theories and methods of economic evaluation and their relevance and limitations as a guide to biodiversity conservation; considers the implications of the phylogenetic similarity principle for the survival of species; discusses consequences of the Noah's Ark problem for selecting features of biodiversity to be saved; analyzes the extent to which the precautionary principle can be rationally used to support the conservation of biodiversity; explores the impact of market extensions, market and other institutional failures, and globalization on biodiversity loss; examines the relationship between the rate of interest and biodiversity depletion; and investigates the implications of intergenerational equity for biodiversity conservation. The consequences of changes in biodiversity for sustainable development are given particular attention.

It has long been recognized that major drivers of biodiversity loss include both the harvest of wild species and the conversion of habitat for productive purposes. Land that is converted may or may not be lost as habitat for many species. In some cases, monoculture production for example, land conversion reduces the number niches and hence the level of biodiversity. In other cases, it has the opposite effect. We address the problem of anthropogenic biodiversity change due to the effects of both harvest rates and land use decisions on landscape heterogeneity. If the optimal structure of the landscape is extremely homogeneous, forces of competitive exclusion will lead to a single surviving species. If it is extremely heterogeneous, multiple species will coexist, with each species exclusively dominating the patch type to which it is best suited. Where changes in biodiversity due to changes in landscape heterogeneity are not taken into account in land use decisions, they are external effects of those decisions. We identify measures of these effects.

Marine ecosystems are complex, and many marine species are ecologically interdependent. As a result, losing a species could produce a cascading effect on other species. Fishery scientists advocate an ecosystem-based approach to fishery management to meet long-term sustainable goals. This paper models the complex interrelationships among species and the relationship between biomass growth and phenotypic diversity. We found that the equilibrium stock and catch/yield levels are overestimated when the diversity is not accounted for. Consequently, if species are diverse, fishery policy based on a single fishery management could overestimate catch potentials and potentially results in biological overfishing and stock collapse.

This paper analyses the economics of biodiversity conservation in the context of a tropical forest ecosystem in the Western Ghats region of India, where coffee is the main competitor for land use. Using primary data covering a cross-section of coffee growers, the study notes that the opportunity costs of biodiversity conservation in terms of coffee benefits foregone are quite high. Even after including external costs due to wildlife damages and defensive expenditure to protect against wildlife, the NPVs and IRRs from coffee for all land holding groups were high. Including external costs, these NPVs across different land holding groups ranged between Rs 17 thousand to over Rs 106 thousand per acre at 12% discount rate, and the IRRs between 16.6% and 23%. Even if the expected benefits were to decrease by 20% and costs rise by a similar proportion, still the IRRs from coffee were quite high (19.5–20.1%). The study notes that the external costs accounted for between 7% and 15% of the total discounted costs of coffee cultivation, and smaller holdings proportionately incurred higher external costs as compared to large holdings. The study also notes high transaction costs incurred by the growers to claim compensation for wildlife damages. Notwithstanding these disincentives, the study notes that the local community had a positive attitude towards biodiversity conservation and were willing to pay in terms of spending time for participatory biodiversity conservation. Taking elephants, a keystone and threatened species in Asia and the study region, for the contingent valuation survey, the study notes that the respondents are willing to spend 25.8 humandays per household annually which works to over Rs 6003 per household per annum in terms of the income foregone. They also preferred a decentralized government institution for participatory biodiversity conservation. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Biodiversity loss raises some of the most difficult issues of equity in international environmental law. Differential obligations have been developed as a means of enabling developed and developing countries to participate in the Biodiversity Convention. This article contends that the actual practices of these obligations have been cast narrowly, reinforce the existing politics and economics of biodiversity conservation, and are difficult to see and practise. They have been predominantly understood as obliging the transfer of funds and technology between states and as implicitly encouraging technology-based development pathways. The article calls for differential obligations to be reworked in environmental justice terms to encompass plural, alternative development pathways, such as creating local economies. It proposes that emerging market-based, community initiatives and the ecological footprint concept could help to provide ways to make differential obligations more workable.

Public concern about the alarmingly high rate of biodiversity loss has not been matched by public willingness to bear boundless costs to stem the tide of extinction. Because resources for conservation are limited, setting conservation priorities to use those resources effectively is crucial. To do so in a way that addresses people's most pressing concerns about biodiversity loss, managers and policy makers must understand those concerns. This study investigates preferences for an array of benefits associated with biodiversity and wildlife and the relative importance to people of each. A survey was administered to a sample of the US population to explore public preferences for types of benefits often associated with biodiversity: utilitarian (commodity and recreation), ecological (certain and uncertain), aesthetic, symbolic, and humanistic. Respondents were asked to rank hypothetical species presented in choice sets of three species, each described simply in terms of one type of benefit. A rank-ordered multinomial logit model was estimated to establish a ranking of the benefits and evaluate the sensitivity of the ranking to socio-demographic variables. The means of the sample predictions indicated the relative importance of each type of benefit. Confidence intervals were constructed to evaluate the extent to which the ranks could be distinguished from one another. Ecological functions were most important to survey respondents; commodity-based benefits and human attributes were of moderate importance; and recreation, aesthetics, and symbolic references in literature and art appeared to be least important.

Summary The failure of society to place a value on nature has resulted in the degradation of ecosystems, a consequent reduction in ecosystem services, and has contributed to a significant decline in biodiversity. The lack of comprehensive methodologies for providing economic valuation for biodiversity and ecosystem services, the results of which can be easily communicated to policy and decision-makers, has hampered efforts to protect, maintain and enhance habitats and species. This paper provides an overview of recent policy, in particular The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) process, and research developments in Europe.

Why does biodiversity conservation matter, and what can be done about it? The article discusses the options in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on the results of a Darwin Initiative project on the ecology and economics of biodiversity conservation in the continent. It uses the case of Sub-Saharan Africa to illustrate both the consequences of biodiversity loss and the constraints within which policy-makers operate. To most people the biodiversity loss that matters is not the global extinction of species, but the effects of local change in flora and fauna on watershed protection, soil conservation, habitat, productivity and amenity. For this reason, biodiversity conservation concerns even the poorest communities. But because poverty, indebtedness, insecurity of land tenure and other social conditions affect the way in which people respond to incentives, the policy options for biodiversity conservation may be different in different parts of the world.

A price for biodiversity, economic valuation at the core of several legitimacy orders. Economic valuation takes up a central place in the economics of biodiversity as well as in the discourses of the different actors taking part in the negotiations and in the process of social construction of biodiversity. Valuation appears first as a theoretical necessity for economists who consider the determination of a price as the essential prerequisite for an optimal management of natural resources. It has acquired an institutional legitimacy through its widespread use in the context of cost-benefit analysis. NGOs also resort to economic valuation for strategic purposes, to back their opposition to planned policies, to stress the despoliation of the South and to promote alternative proposals with second assessments. Because of this takeover of valuation by all the actors, it is not to be considered as a merely economic tool. Though the valuations done for some aspects of blodiversity such as non-timber forest products, medicinal plants or ecotourism are to some extent based on economic methods, their purpose is not that suggested by economic theory. They are not revealing concealed values that would exist prior to valuation. They are instrumental in building these values. This bias is not only due to the strategic use of their results by the actors but to the very valuation methods and procedures. Some economists hold the valuation methods to be preferable to other consultation procedures because of their pretended characteristics of neutrality, democracy and optimality. The calling into question of the latter should lead to relativize the significance of economic valuation.

In the economics of biodiversity, the relevant policy question is the level of certainty of species survival, rather than the simplistic binary problem of species preservation or extinction. In this study models of cui-ui survival probability and economic cost of water transfer are developed to estimate the cost of an endangered species preservation: the Northwestern Nevada cui-ui fish. There is a cost of over 160 million dollars to increase the likelihood of cui-ui survival by 2 percent, from 53 to 55. The cost increases to over 2 billion dollars to increase the likelihood of cui-ui survival by 22 percent, from 63 to 85. These findings highlight the economic trade-offs associated with modifying the survival likelihood of an endangered species. These results also confirm quantitatively the biological fact that the survival uncertainty must explicitly enter any discussion of species preservation.

Introduction In this chapter we look at the costs and benefits of three possible interventions that would enhance the planet's biodiversity and improve its ecosystems over the next forty years. The results are based on a study carried out across four research institutes and coordinated by the Scottish Agricultural College (Hussain et al ., 2011) that combined a global biophysical model (IMAGE-GLOBIO), which analyzed the biophysical impacts of different development scenarios compared to the counterfactual, with a set of valuation studies that placed monetary values on the outcomes resulting from the different policy options in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESSs). While reference is frequently made in the popular press to biodiversity losses, in practice it is difficult to quantify and value them. There are several studies that attempt to do this in specific cases but no one has successfully estimated the value of the loss of biodiversity at a global level. This is because the links between biodiversity and biolo-gical systems and the economic and social values that they support are extremely complex. Even the measurement of biodiversity is problematic, with a multi-dimensional metric regarded as appropriate (Purvis and Hector, 2000; Mace et al ., 2003), but with further work considered necessary to define the appropriate combination.

(1992). The Economics of Biodiversity: Lives and Lifestyles. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 1-25.

How will biodiversity loss affect ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing? In an age of accelerating biodiversity loss, this volume summarizes recent advances in biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning research and explores the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The first section summarizes the development of the basic science and provides a meta-analysis that quantitatively tests several biodiversity and ecosystem functioning hypotheses. The second section describes the natural science foundations of biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning research, including: quantifying functional diversity, the development of the field into a predictive science, effects of stability and complexity, methods to quantify mechanisms by which diversity affects functioning, the importance of trophic structure, microbial ecology, and spatial dynamics. The third section takes research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning further than it has ever gone into the human dimension. The first six chapters cover the most pressing environmental challenges humanity faces, including effects of diversity on: climate change mitigation, restoration of degraded habitats, managed ecosystems, pollination, disease, and biological invasions. The remaining chapters of section three that consider the economic perspective, including: a synthesis of the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity, and the options open to policy-makers to address the failure of markets to account for the loss of ecosystem services; an examination of the challenges of valuing ecosystem services and, hence, to understanding the human consequences of decisions that neglect these services; and an examination of the ways in which economists are currently incorporating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research into decision models for the conservation and management of biodiversity. The final section describes new advances in ecoinformatics that will help transform this field into a globally predictive science, and finally, summarizes the advancements and future directions of the field. The book's ultimate conclusion is that biodiversity is an essential element of any strategy for sustainable development.

The irreversible loss of genetic information (and the resulting loss of both evolutionary and technological options) caused by the extinction of species involves a global public good, the gene pool. Although important, it is not the only reason to be concerned about biodiversity change. As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005b) points out, another reason for concern is the role of biodiversity in the loss of ecosystem services. These also involve public goods, but unlike the public good associated with species extinction, they are almost always local or regional in extent. The conservation of species threatened with local extirpation protects a number of provisioning and cultural services, as well as the capacity of the local system to function over a range of environmental and market conditions. The latter may involve, for example, the regulation of specific biogeochemical cycles in different climatic conditions, or the protection of crop yields in the face of an array of pests and pathogens. In almost all cases, however, conservation of the functionality of particular ecosystems provides benefits to specific communities rather than to global society (Perrings and Gadgil 2003). Whether we focus on the gene pool or ecosystem services, however, biodiversity – the composition and relative abundance of species – is important because of its role in supporting the capacity of the system to deliver services over a range of environmental conditions. The economic problem of biodiversity, in this sense, differs from the economic problem of individual biological resources. The question is not at what rate to extract a particular resource, but how to balance the mix of species to assure a flow of benefits over a range of possible conditions. Biodiversity conservation is frequently a public good. In many cases, nobody can be excluded from the benefits offered by the protection of assemblages, and if one person benefits it does not reduce the benefits to others. Because it is a public good, it will be ‘undersupplied’ if left to the market. The incentive that people have to free ride on the conservation activities of others means that people will collectively conserve too little biodiversity. At the same time the lack of markets for many of the biodiversity impacts of human activities mean that people are not confronted with the true cost of their decisions. Open access to scarce environmental resources is widely recognized to be a major cause of overexploitation. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the world’s fisheries. Worm et al. (2006) identified catches from 1950 to 2003 within all 64 large marine ecosystems worldwide: the source of 83 per cent of global catches over the past 50 years. They reported that the rate of fisheries collapses in these areas (catches less than 10 per cent of the recorded maximum) has been accelerating, and that 29 per cent of fished species were in a state of collapse in 2003. Cumulative collapses affected 65 per cent of all species fished. While property rights are generally better developed in terrestrial systems, many of the effects from anthropogenic land use change on biodiversity and

The first part of the chapter provides concise definitions of biodiversity. It explores the different meanings with which the term is used – genetic diversity, species diversity, intra-specific diversity, ecosystem diversity, functional diversity. It then considers the ecological services connected to biodiversity and the indices that can be used to quantify it, which may focus alternatively on species richness or on species diversity. The central part of the chapter focuses on the economics of biodiversity loss, including the economic value of biodiversity, biodiversity as a public good, use and non-use values, biodiversity and risk in agro-ecosystems. After analysing the social and economic factors driving the loss of biological diversity, the final sections discuss the available conservation policies: incentives, property rights, price reforms, protected areas, safe minimum standards, and international agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Biosafety Protocol.

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsContributorsPart I Biodiversity and the Genesis of Sprawl 1. The Context and Causes of Sprawl, by Barbara L. Lawrence2. The Impacts of Sprawl on Biodiversity, by Elizabeth A. Johnson and Michael W. KlemensPart II Sprawl, Ecosystems, and Processes 3. Freshwater Wetland Biodiversity in an Urbanizing World, by Nicholas A. Miller and Michael W. Klemens4. Ecosystems, Disturbance, and the Impact of Sprawl, by Seth R. Reice5. Bees, Pollination, and the Challenges of Sprawl, by James H. Cane6. Effects of Urbanization on Decomposer Communities and Soil Processes in Forest Remnants, by Margaret M. Carreiro7. Sprawl and Disease, by Fred W. Koontz and Peter DaszakPart III Sprawl and Species 8. Sprawl and Species with Limited Dispersal Abilities, by Diane L. Byers and Joseph C. Mitchell9. Sprawl and Highly Mobile or Wide-Ranging Species, by Justina C. Ray10. Species that Benefit from Sprawl, by Stephen DeStefano and Elizabeth A. JohnsonPart IV Identifying and Meeting the Challenges of Sprawl 11. Maintaining Connectivity in Urbanizing Landscapes, by M. A. Sanjayan and Kevin R. Crooks12. The Economics of Biodiversity in Urbanizing Ecosystems, by Stephen Farber13. Conserving Biodiversity Through State and Regional Planning, by Jessica Wilkinson, Sara Vickerman, and Jeff Lerner14. Integrating Conservation of Biodiversity into Local Planning, by Jayne Daly and Michael W. Klemens15. Building Public Awareness About the Effects of Sprawl on Biodiversity, by Cynthia Coffin and Jane Elder16. Creating a Framework for Change, by Michael W. Klemens and Elizabeth A. JohnsonIndex

Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is defined as variations in gene, species, and ecosystem habitat (terrestrial and aquatic) (Chapman, 1999). The extinction of plant and animal species results in loss of biodiversity. Humans have increased the rate of extinction through direct and indirect human activity encroaching on natural ecosystems. Direct activity consists of killing flora and fauna for consumption. Indirect activity consists of destruction of the habitat by (1) land conversion through tropical deforestation and draining of wetlands for agricultural use, (2) introduction of exotic species that do not have predators, and (3) pollution.

Complexity of the concept of sustainability is regarded as a major factor in its defence. Sustainability is politically acceptable for who could be against it? Its vagueness makes it hard for the philosopher or even the economist to attack it. Biodiversity is no less difficult a concept especially allowing for the taxonomic and spatial complexity and the prospects of genetic engineering.