Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services sets out the Government’s ambition to halt overall loss of England’s biodiversity by 2020, and in the longer term to move progressively from a position of net biodiversity loss to net gain.

The strategy will guide conservation efforts in England over the next decade, with the overarching mission:

“To halt overall biodiversity loss, support healthy well-functioning ecosystems and establish coherent ecological networks, with more and better places for nature for the benefit of wildlife and people.”

The value of biodivserity

The strategy is built on the premise that biodiversity, the variety of all life on Earth, is important both for its own sake and because human survival depends upon it. The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) presented a comprehensive account of how the natural world, including its biodiversity, provides us with services that are critical to our wellbeing and economic prosperity.

The NEA also showed that nature is consistently undervalued in decision-making and that many of the services we get from nature are in decline: over 40% of priority habitats and 30% of priority species in the most recent analysis.

Launching Biodiversity 2020, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said:

“Our wildlife is not only something that we should value because it’s nice to look at. Nature underpins our very existence, giving us clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and healthy food to eat. This strategy sets out how we will stop the loss of species and habitats, so that this generation can be the first to leave our natural environment in a better state than they found it.”

The strategy takes account of the evidence provided by the National Ecosystem Assessment and Making Space for Nature, Professor Sir John Lawton’s review of England’s wildlife sites and ecological networks.

Priorities for action

It proposes four priorities for action to achieve by 2020 stated outcomes of maintaining and enhancing biodiversity on land and at sea, achieving an overall improvement in the status of wildlife, and engaging more people in biodiversity:

• A more integrated large-scale approach to conservation on land and at sea;
• Putting people at the heart of biodiversity policy;
• Reducing environmental pressures;
• Improving our knowledge.

International commitments to biodiversity

The strategy provides a comprehensive picture of how the Government is meeting international and EU commitments, and follows up the global agreement reached at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010. Signatories to the historic Nagoya agreement pledged to produce a strategy to tackle wildlife loss in their own country to reduce the loss of species and habitats by 2020. England is one of the first countries in the world to fulfil this commitment.

Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, said:

“In Nagoya, the global community adopted 20 ambitious Aichi Targets under the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and countries were called upon to translate these into national biodiversity strategies. The UK is one of the first countries to respond, with the National Ecosystem Assessment, the Natural Environment White Paper and now with the updated Biodiversity Strategy for England. I’m very pleased to see that in line with the Aichi Targets, England’s new biodiversity strategy includes clear quantitative targets as well as priority actions to address pressures from agriculture, forestry and fisheries.”

Further reading

• Biodiversity 2020: a strategy for England’s wildlife and ecosystem services;
• The Natural Environment White Paper, The Natural Choice;
• Natural England: list of species and habitats of principal importance for conserving biodiversity in England;
• Conserving Biodiversity – the UK Approach: shared vision for UK Biodiversity conservation adopted by the devolved administrations and the UK government in 2007.

You may also be interested in...

• UK National Ecosystem Assessment: the next phase
• Natural Environment White Paper, one year on

The 2010 International Year of Biodiversity culminated in the successful conference of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya. Keen to keep up international commitment, the UN has declared 2011 the start of a decade dedicated to biodiversity. So what’s next for biodiversity?

One idea, much discussed at Nagoya, is the need to improve valuation of natural capital in decision-making.

The value of natural capital

Natural capital refers the economic and social value derived from the services ecosystems provide. For example, coastal wetlands provide a number of environmental services from food production and flood prevention to habitat for rare species to recreation. Part of the value of natural capital could the cost to the economy, if that service no longer existed naturally, for example if lost wetlands have to be replaced by manmade flood defences.

There are four categories of ecosystems service, as outlined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:

• Provisioning services – from products such as fuel or food;
• Regulating services – the benefits of natural processes such as water purification or air quality;
• Cultural services – non-material benefits from the natural environment such as education and well-being;
• Supporting services – functions that are necessary for the production of other ecosystem services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling.

It is estimated that in 2007 the total value of natural resources to the UK economy was over £15bn. Despite this, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report, published in 2010, both argue that we are in danger of not recognising the value of these services to economic prosperity and societal wellbeing and as such our global ecosystems are in decline.

Our current systems often fail to adequately capture natural value in policy-making processes. For example, present decisions based on a cost benefit analysis might value the monetary benefit of felled timber from forests, but it do not so frequently capture the cost of depleting important ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration from the atmosphere or erosion control.

A global solution

The Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE) Natural Capital Initiative launched at Nagoya aims to address this problem.

GLOBE believes that the solution to better ecosystem service valuation is a three pronged approach:

• Improved scientific assessment of trends of natural capital;
• Better understanding of economic valuation of natural capital;
• Greater political leadership.

Although the latter depends on improved scientific evidence and economic analysis, GLOBE believes more can be done now to use the pre-existing tools and techniques available to policy makers. GLOBE, speaking to the world’s governments and politicians in Nagoya, published a Natural Capital Action Plan to enhance political leadership from international governments.

The Action Plan sets out a clear set of policy asks that aim to ‘set the world on a path to a more sustainable future’. These asks include:

• A dedicated ministerial position within the main financial department with responsibility for overseeing the country’s natural wealth
• An interministerial committee overseeing natural capital with an accompanying independent advisory body.
• A national natural capital account that measures the countries natural wealth and an accompanying report to outline how policy decisions have valued ecosystems services.
• Departmental inventories of natural capital related to their policy areas and an increased role for national audit offices to oversee the efficient and effective use of natural resources by government departments.
• Agreed metrics on ecosystem services for all major investment decisions and governments should encourage uptake of this methodology by business and local authorities.

Best practice

GLOBE is also keen to emphasise the economic and social benefits of protecting ecosystem services.

The UN estimates that the battle to avert ecosystem collapse could generate a $5 trillion industry. GLOBE highlights a number of case studies in an accompanying report that demonstrates how environmental management can be integrated with major public policy areas, such as economic growth, job creation, energy and food security, and natural resource management.

For example, rezoning of the Australian Great Barrier reef in 2004 to prevent resource extraction in one third of the park has led to an abundance in fish populations, coral recovery and a decline in invasive species across the whole of the reef.  This has resulted in subsequent economic benefits through increased tourism and an improved fishing industry.

In Denmark, the restoration of drained farm land back to natural park in the Skjern Valley region has led to economic and social benefits through increased fish stock levels, a return in bird populations, improved water quality and increased outdoor recreation.  The total cost of the restoration programme, much of which was funded by the Danish Government, was approximately $42 million, while the total benefits have been estimated at $83 million.

The Mexican government is leading the way in adopting a large scale payment for ecosystem services (PES) programme. The programme sees large scale non-agricultural water users pay for hydrological services; the money is then invested in forest owners to incentivise the protection of natural forests. In 2008, the programme paid close to $8.4 million to landowners, individuals, and communities, protecting around 324,000 ha of land. There is also evidence to suggest that payments have led to poverty alleviation in forest regions.

What is the UK doing about it?

Protecting the environment and enhancing biodiversity is one of Defra’s top three priorities, as outlined in the Department’s Structural Reform Plan. 

A key commitment under this priority is the publication of a White Paper on the natural environment by spring 2011. This paper will set out an ambitious statement outlining the government’s vision for the natural environment, backed up with practical action to deliver that ambition. It represents an opportunity to change the way we think about and manage the natural environment, seeing it as a system and valuing the services it gives us.

Defra is also already working to produce an analysis of the changing state of the UK’s natural asset base (the National Ecosystems Assessment). The assessment (expected in the Spring of 2011) will provide the first comprehensive analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and continuing economic prosperity

In addition, Defra’s Natural Value Programme is working with policy makers across government and businesses to increase uptake and improve tools and techniques to value ecosystem services.

Natural capital – what can you do?

For advice on taking an ecosystem services approach: What nature can do for you: a practical introduction to making the most of natural services, assets and resources in policy and decision making provides a guide for policy makers on an ecosystems approach.

Further reading

• GLOBE Natural Capital Action Plan: report (pdf)
• GLOBE Natural Capital Action Plan: case studies (pdf)
• Ecosystems services: information from Defra
• UK National Ecosystem Assessment
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Kew strongly supports the agreement reached in Nagoya for protecting the natural environment. This positive outcome shows international consensus for the urgent need to increase our efforts in conserving biodiversity worldwide and to share the benefits of this natural heritage equitably.

This new global plan to protect our natural environment is critical and Kew, with its partners in the UK and around the world, will be scaling up efforts to halt the loss of habitats and species now and in the years ahead.

How Kew will make a difference

Kew will support the implementation of the targets of the Strategic Plan through its contribution to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

Two of the key targets in the new Strategic Plan are to at least halve, and wherever possible to reduce to zero, the rate of loss of natural habitats including forests; and through conservation and restoration, to restore 15% of degraded areas.

Kew will be working towards these objectives in a number of ways, including through projects such as the Millennium Seed Bank partnership, restoration ecology and the Sampled Red List Index for Plants.

We also welcome the agreement to link the issues of biodiversity, climate change and poverty when protecting the world’s forests. All life depends on plants, they provide clean air, water, food, fuel, medicine and shelter and they help regulate the climate.

Now new targets are in place for 2020, it is absolutely critical that governments and organisations around the world work collaboratively to achieve them. Organisations such as Kew are even better placed to deliver effective science-based conservation, to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is healthy and continues to provide the essential services upon which we all depend.

Ambitious but achievable targets

Kew welcomes the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing (ABS) to provide clarity and a structure within which we can access plant resources and apply our benefit sharing activities.

In 1996, Kew set up a Convention on Biological Diversity Unit to facilitate Kew’s support of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), particularly its Access and Benefit Sharing provisions. Throughout our long history of advising Defra and our partners on the subject of Access and Benefit Sharing, we have developed an international reputation for good practice in this area.

Kew also welcomes COP’s support for an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) which we see as an important vehicle for informing decision-making at many levels. We recognise the need for scientists to provide a unified and authoritative view to policy-makers and we look forward to engaging with IPBES processes as they become established.

Kew celebrates the adoption of the updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, a global framework in which we can actively contribute to the development of capacity for plant conservation with partner institutions around the world.

The new targets are ambitious but achievable, given the firm foundation established since 2002. The availability of The Plant List, due for publication later this year, as a response to Target 1 of the original GSPC will greatly facilitate planning, delivery and monitoring of all the new targets.

Biodiversity conservation is a key priority for the UK Government through Kew’s funding Department, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, attended the conference in Nagoya, afterwards saying:

“The new agreement states we will take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of habitats and species in order to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is resilient and can continue to provide the essential services that we would otherwise take for granted. This will secure the planet’s variety of life, our well being and help eradicate poverty.”

One of the principles of the circular economy is that we should use insights from living systems to design systems that work and sustain themselves.

Life has constantly adapted to survive and thrive, it’s been going on for more than 3 billion years yet somehow we seem to have gradually moved away from its basic framework, forgotten how important the restorative ‘nature of nature’ is. Did the International Biodiversity Conference held in Nagoya in October help get us back on track?

Our current model generates waste, takes chunks of precious finite resources and turns them into downgraded by-products which are at best useless, at worst toxic. Nature does not do that, and does not see waste as anything other than food for the next cycle… What’s more, it relies on a large variety of species, systems and organisms that allow it to withstand external shocks, because diversity equals strength. This is precisely why the deal reached at the end of the international biodiversity conference in Nagoya recently should be given the credit it deserves.

Now before we go into further detail, let’s make one thing clear – granted, the agreement reached could have been more legally binding and bolder in its objectives. There have been many critical views voiced since its publication, and several observers have pointed out that international institutions put much more effort into protecting the model that destroys ecosystems than the ecosystems themselves…

The purpose of this article is not to analyse the outcome of the conference in detail or individually judge its results, but to outline the importance of the principle it actually put to work: the evaluation, in monetary terms, of nature’s services, which has been called for by many experts for years.

Algae biofuels, algae-based pharmaceutical products, minerals… the real challenge is to find a way to “use and not use up”. Nature must be seen as capital to build, not to deplete for short-term profit. (Photo: Joss Blériot)

It would be easy to let that crucial part of the deal go unnoticed, under the radar, to only focus on the ‘sanctuaries-creating’ effort. In fact, one needs to consider both aspects are intertwined, as Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman put it:

“The new agreement states we will take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of habitats and species in order to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is resilient and can continue to provide the essential services that we would otherwise take for granted.”

Contrary to what a lot of people think, it was not about flying representatives of 190 or so countries to Japan in order to safeguard a handful of exotic flowers no one has ever heard of – alleviating some of the pressure biodiversity is under must not be mistaken for a simple conservation effort, it’s not about trapping a few areas of outstanding natural beauty under a thick coat of varnish to make sure they never change. It might sound a bit caricatural, but that view is more common than one might imagine – the real goal is to try and protect the balance of the whole system by taking care of its parts, whilst at the same time acknowledging its real economical contribution.

If diversity is strength – to add another founding principle to the mix – allowing it to dwindle amounts to consciously letting the living systems that support us weaken, while we should be doing exactly the opposite: building natural capital. Surely, if we are going to learn lessons from living systems, we want to have as many sources of inspiration as possible….

So why is it that looking after nature, its resources and the services it provides us, is often seen as an anti-progress stance? Probably because, as Michael Braungart puts it, our industrialised society has destroyed the environment so much – for short-term profit – that we now compensate, with a guilt-induced desire to do as little harm as possible (once again, the ‘do less’ motto is at work). And of course, this won’t lead us anywhere, as it merely delays the inevitable.

But if you think the Nagoya biodiversity agreement is an effect of that process, think again, because arguably for the first time an international convention looked further than the simple decorative qualities of nature and actually put a value on some resources and services – not to lock them up in a vault, but to give them the respect they deserve, to make sure they can continue to thrive, remain an asset, and a source of inspiration for a better future. Now go tell Eben Bayer, the mushroom-packaging inventor that imitating and working with nature is not a progressive way of looking at things, and see what he thinks…

Sources

• International Biodiversity Conference
• Defra’s Nagoya statement

As the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) closed on Friday, representatives of almost 200 nations agreed a new strategy “to meet the unprecedented
challenges of the continued loss of biodiversity compounded by climate change”.

The agreement includes:

• The Aichi Target
  Under the new 10-year strategic plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity signatories will draw up national biodiversity plans to meet 20 headline targets under five strategic goals:
  • addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss;
  • reducing the pressures on biodiversity;
  • safeguarding biodiversity at all levels;
  • enhancing the benefits provided by biodiversity;
  • providing for capacity-building.

  Targets include at least halving the rate of loss of natural habitats, restoring at least 15% of degraded areas, and expanding protected areas to 17% of the world’s land and 10% of marine areas.

• The Nagoya Protocol
  The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization creates a framework to balance access to the genetic resources of developing countries with an equitable sharing of the benefits.

Parties at the conference also endorsed a plan of action for cities and biodiversity, announced financial resources to support the agreement, and agreed to to identify further necessary finance in time for the 11th Conference of the Parties in India in 2012.

Securing the planet’s variety of life

Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the UK delegation, welcomed the agreement:

“These have been long and hard negotiations, but we have successfully achieved a new global plan to help protect our natural environment. We have also agreed an historic protocol which has been 18 years in the making, establishing a regime where developing countries will allow access to their genetic and natural resources in return for a share of the benefits for their use.

“The new agreement states we will take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of habitats and species in order to ensure that by 2020 our natural environment is resilient and can continue to provide the essential services that we would otherwise take for granted. This will secure the planet’s variety of life, our well being and help eradicate poverty.”

Key elements of the agreement will be incorporated into Defra’s Natural Environment White Paper, to be published in Spring 2011.

Linking climate change, global poverty and biodiversity

The conference acknowledged the need to better integrate the biodiversity agenda with climate change and land degradation. The Nagoya protocol is intended to ensure that developing nations enjoy a fair share of the benefits of genetic resources, while defining adequate development funding is a priority for further negotiation.

Earlier in the conference, Caroline Spelman announced £100 million of UK Government funding for international forestry projects benefiting biodiversity, demonstrating the potential for international climate finance to deliver additional benefits:

“We have also secured an agreement to link climate change, global poverty and biodiversity together in protecting the world’s forests, which is essential if we are to achieve our aims in these areas. This was a key objective for the UK and this week I announced £100 million specifically to fund biodiversity projects in forest regions.”

International cooperation for biodiversity

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, welcomed the Nagoya agreement as an example of nations successfully finding common ground to tackle a global problem:

“This is a day to celebrate in terms of a new and innovative response to the alarming loss of biodiversity and ecosystems. It is an important moment for the United Nations and the ability of countries to put aside the narrow differences that all too often divide in favour of the broader, shared issues that can united peoples and nations.”

Rethinking Global Biodiversity Strategies: Exploring structural changes in production and consumption to reduce biodiversity loss. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), The Hague/Bilthoven, 2010

A new report by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) concludes that biodiversity strategies focusing on conservation expanding the area of protected conservation areas will not, by themselves, be sufficient to halt biodiversity loss. Structural changes in production and consumption, across a range of sectors, are needed.

The report says that an ambitious, comprehensive and cross-sector strategy would cut the rate of biodiversity decline up to 2050 by half, compared to what is projected without any new policies. Measures in the combination explored include an expanded protected area network, more efficient agriculture and forestry, improved forest management, less meat intensive diets and limiting climate change. By design the combination of options contributes to other goals such as mitigating climate change and improving food security. It also says that biodiversity targets and policies need to be framed by and mainstreamed into other policy domains. Closer co-ordination between biodiversity policymakers and international bodies in other policy areas is essential for meaningful progress.

The report beginss by calculated anticipated rates of biodiversity loss under that under baseline or BAU conditions. It find that, measured in terms of Mean Species Abundance (MSA), biodiversity will drop from 70% to 60% between 2000 and 2050. 100% is what biodiversity would be in an ‘intact’ situation with no human influence. Grassland and forest biomes suffer the largest losses.

The report then explores goes on to explore eight options for reducing biodiversity loss globally in the coming decades. The first two options highlight the need to expand protected areas and reduce deforestation.

Six further options aim at the main drivers of biodiversity loss and are associated with a range of actors and economic sectors including agriculture, fisheries, forestry, energy and climate policy, and food consumption and production.

Further reading

• Press release: Global ecosystems heavily under pressure; the PBL identifies new strategies for the COP10 in Nagoya
• Full report available to download

The 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) runs from 18 to 29 October 2010, in Nagoya, Japan, culminating in a high-level ministerial segment between 27 and 29 October. The UK delegation will be led by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.

Japan’s Environment Minister, Ryu Matsumoto, explains the importance of the conference in his welcome message:

“Biodiversity loss is accelerating around the globe, exacerbated by the impacts of climate change. In this regard, the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties provides a unique opportunity to respond to the global challenge of biodiversity and meet the needs of present generation and generations to come.”

UK priorities for Nagoya

2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, has seen a growing appreciation of the importance of biodiversity and a recognition of the global failure to address the issue of biodiversity to date. The TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) study has raised awareness of the issue’s economic significance.

The UK’s stated priorities for the Nagoya conference are:

1. To address the fact that the 2010 target has not been met, and identify the reasons behind this.
2. To develop an ambitious and realistic successor to the 2010 biodiversity target, supported by a set of measurable and achievable sub-targets which will drive action on biodiversity worldwide.
3. Greater integration of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in decision-making.
4. Greater linkages between biodiversity, climate change and development, including through international forest conservation

A new response to the challenges facing natural systems

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, asserts the “real opportunity to boost the prospects for biodiversity and the health of natural systems”:

“The ground work has been laid for a new response to the persistent and emerging challenges facing natural systems and their biodiversity.

“2010 is the opportunity to open a new chapter where the myriad of intelligent policies and smart market mechanisms that have been tried and tested over the past decades are rapidly evolved to become part of mainstream economic policy.

“On a planet of six billion, rising to over nine billion by 2050, more creative ways of managing ecosystems and biodiversity that reflect their central role in human well being and their inordinate contribution to live, livelihoods and economies will in large part determine whether an ever more populous humanity can survive and thrive in the 21st century.”

He highlights some of the striking findings of TEEB on the potential for “more creative management of the Earth’s nature-based assets”:

• The world’s 100,000 National Parks and protected areas generate wealth via nature-based good and services equal to around $5 trillion but only employ 1.5 million people – indicating a potentially significant new area for employment generation.
• TEEB estimates that securing these $5 trillion worth of services might require an additional investment of just $50 billion a year – a good cost benefit ratio of 100:1.
• Coral reefs – whose fishery, tourism and flood protection services are estimated at between $100,000 and $600,000 per square km – could be conserved for an investment of close to $780 per square km or 0.2 per cent of the value of the ecosystem protected.
• Deforestation contributes close to 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – $17 billion to over $30 billion annually could halve this while securing livelihoods and boosting conservation-related employment in tropical countries.
• A global marine protected area network, involving the closure of 20 per cent of total fishing grounds, could result in profit losses of an estimated $270 million annually but could sustain fisheries worth $80-100 billion a year; assist in conserving an estimated 27 million jobs while generating one million new ones and protect food supplies for over one billion people.

Meeting unprecedented challenges

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the CBD, sums up the challenge presented by the continuing loss of biodiversity and the urgent need for action:

“Our common future is at stake: as a family of nations and people we need to rise up individually and collectively to meet the unprecedented challenges of the loss of biodiversity compounded by climate change that we and our children are confronted with. I therefore sincerely hope that Aichi-Nagoya Summit will be the beginning of a new era for mankind ‘living in harmony with nature, into the Future’. It will therefore be historically associated with biodiversity in the same way as Kyoto is with climate change.”

It is easy to forget that all businesses depend on biodiversity and ecosystem services, either directly of indirectly. Many continue to overlook the impacts and dependencies their business has on natural resources, bringing undefined risks and neglecting possible profitable opportunities. The degradation of ecosystems continues because “services of nature are nearly always provided for free and so not valued until they are gone”.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study released its report for business in June this year, highlighting the dependence of business on ecosystems and the economic significance of the global loss of biological biodiversity.

The full TEEB for Business report is available to download and will be published in print by Earthscan in 2011.

Defra minister Richard Benyon welcomed the report in a speech to the Global Business and Biodiversity conference, highlighting its estimate that deforestation costs between 2 and 5 trillion dollars a year in lost services.

Secretary of State Caroline Spelman, speaking at the same conference, identified some key messages from the report:

It shows consumers have growing expectations of business when it comes to biodiversity. It shows the unforeseen effects that business practice can have on our environment and ecosystems, making everything from drought to flooding ever more likely. And it shows that the global impact of business on biodiversity and the environment – for good or ill – is both one of the biggest tests and the best opportunities facing industry today.

The economics of biodiversity loss

A global study on the economics of biodiversity loss was first proposed at the 2007 meeting of environment ministers from the G8 and five major developing economies:

“In a global study we will initiate the process of analyzing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective conservation.”

In response, the German government and European Commission (EC) launched the TEEB study with Pavan Sukhdev as study leader. TEEB is led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with support from the EC, German Federal Ministry for the Environment, and Defra. The final synthesis of phase 2 will be presented at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya in October 2010.

TEEB for business

The TEEB for Business report aims to demonstrate that biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation present both serious risks and significant opportunities for business. Emphasis on the improvement of growth opportunities is a central focus of the document.

TEEB makes the case for incorporating the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) in all business decision-making. By combining science, economics and policy it aims to use the latest knowledge to encourage businesses to evaluate their environmental impacts, in order to provide insights into how they can operate more sustainably and reduce costs.

Business opportunities and environmental services

The creation of new business opportunities can be highly reliant on the provision of free environmental services. For example, bottled water companies make a profit from water provided by nature at no cost.

Opportunities for business growth can also arise from moving to more sustainable practices: global sales of organic food and drink amounted to US$46 billion in 2007, a three-fold increase since 1999.

However, the continued degradation of the environment will begin to provide fewer and fewer opportunities and environmental services, even for controlled business exploitation. This makes it ever more important for companies to assess their environmental impacts or run the risk of negative impacts on their opportunities for growth as a direct consequence of their ignorance.

TEEB for Business advises that generated ecological footprints can be reduced by observing environmental effects sourced through supply chains as well as primary impacts.

Addressing the Social Issues

Social issues must be addressed in conjunction with sustainable commerce:

“The challenge is to reinforce economic development strategies that are ecologically sustainable, socially equitable and good for business”.

TEEB for Business considers Syngenta’s activities as an example of a business initiative that addresses both poverty and biodiversity. Syngenta, a “world-leading agri-business committed to sustainable agriculture”, supports a project with small farmers in Kenya, working in partnership with local NGOs and communities. The introduction of modern agriculture techniques is intended to increase crop yields and income. Conservation-oriented farming practices and better market-access are made available to ensure social benefits for the Kenyans.

Regulatory reform

Regulatory reforms are required both to create the enabling framework for new biodiversity and ecosystem services business, and to ensure environmental protection. Building on experience with global carbon markets, policy-makers are now experimenting with business-oriented reforms to enable the development of markets for other ecosystem services.

Governments have an important role to play in providing the right fiscal environment, by:

• removing environmentally-harmful subsidies;
• offering tax credits for conservation investment;
• establishing stronger environmental liability;
• developing new ecosystem property rights and trading schemes;
• encouraging increased public access to information through reporting and disclosure;
• facilitating cross-sector collaboration.

Input from financial and market experts, as well as from government, is essential to enable efficient markets.

Business leadership on biodiversity and ecosystems

The TEEB report includes a list of seven aims for companies to start showing leadership in sustainability today:

1. Identify impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES)
2. Assess risks and opportunities associated with those impacts and dependencies
3. Set targets, measure and value performance and report results
4. Take action to avoid, minimize and mitigate biodiversity and ecosystem services risks
5. Grasp new BES business opportunities such as cost-efficiencies, new products and new markets
6. Incorporate wider corporate social responsibility initiatives into business strategy and actions on BES
7. Engage with business peers, government, NGOs and civil society to improve BES guidance and policy

It’s turning out to be a busy year for biodiversity, especially as the UN has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity, coinciding with the 2010 Biodiversity Target, which aims to halt the decline in biodiversity by the end of 2010.

Raising awareness of biodiversity: events and activities in 2010

The International Year of Biodiversity was declared by the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, with the intended goal of raising the awareness of the importance of biodiversity through activities and events around the globe. Planned events range from government-led initiatives to NGOs providing support and resources for national events, such as the International Day for Biological Diversity on the 22nd of May 2010.

In the UK, the Natural History Museum is co-ordinating IYB-UK, the partnership supporting the IYB. Events in the UK during the year include the Bristol Festival of Nature and an exhibition at the Royal Institution on The Case of the Deviant Toad.

The importance of biodiversity

Biodiversity refers to the variety of species, genes and ecosystems that exist, and is a key indicator of the health of any ecosystem.

Biodiversity is important for many of reasons. We only need to look at the wide range of ecosystem services that are provided by a biologically diverse environment – along with the biological resources and social benefits that we often take for granted – to realise that a decline in biodiversity could adversely affect environmental stability worldwide.

Approaching the point of no return

As according to Professor Bob Watson, Defra chief scientific adviser and former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are approaching a ‘point of no return’. This is a pressing concern especially considering that climate change and biodiversity are inextricably linked: immediate action is essential.

The economics of biodiversity

Another biodiversity-related initiative currently underway is The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study. The study, led by UNEP with support from Defra, the European Commission, and German Federal Ministry for the Environment, was started in 2007 in response to a proposal by the G8+5 Environment Ministers, with the aim of highlighting the major global economic benefits of biodiversity, and the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.

TEEB aims to demonstrate that ‘economics can be an powerful instrument in biodiversity policy’, while also raising awareness of the impact that individuals can have upon the environment. Autumn 2010 will also see the release of the final TEEB synthesis report, in time for platforms such as the Convention on Biological Diversity COP10 meeting, which takes place in October in Nagoya, Japan.

Hope for the Earth’s biodiversity

The strong focus on Biodiversity through 2010 should make it the year when the implications of a decline in biodiversity are not only fully realised, but also acted upon. A concerted effort is needed to help halt the decline in biodiversity – fortunately, later this year in Japan, there will be a real chance to help safeguard the results of billions of years of evolution.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) is celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity with ’10 messages for 2010′, each examining a theme of biodiversity.

One message will be published each month until the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Nagoya in October, highlighting how the declining diversity of life on Earth is threatening both the natural world and human well-being.

Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of EEA, described the importance of understanding the costs and benefits of diverse genes, species and ecosystems:

We know that market prices need to reflect the full value of the benefits that we obtain from healthy ecosystems as well as the true costs of using them. This means that we need to understand the role of biodiversity in sustaining ecosystems and the policies that are effective in conserving and protecting different habitats and species from local to global levels.

The first message focuses on the interaction between climate change and biodiversity:

The variety of life underpins our social and economic wellbeing and will be an increasingly indispensible resource in the battle against climate change. However, our consumption and production patterns are depriving ecosystems of their capacity to withstand climate change and deliver the services we need from them. As we understand more about the ways that climate change is impacting biodiversity, it becomes clear that we cannot tackle the two crises separately. Their interdependence requires us to address them together.

The full message is available to download from the EEA website.