A suite of publications from The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study offer advice and guidance for local and regional policymakers.

About TEEB

TEEB is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions.

From our archives
» The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations, an introduction to TEEB by study leader Pavan Sukhdev

TEEB for Local and Regional Policy Makers Report

This report provides an advisory tool for local and regional policymakers, administrators and managers. The information in this report is also useful to organisations such as NGOs, regulatory bodies, permitting agencies and the judicial system.

The report explores and gives practical guidance on how to deal with the challenge of biodiversity loss at a local and regional level. It examines what local governments can do with respect to natural resource use and management, maintaining and supporting biodiversity, local and regional urban and spatial design, as well as market-based approaches, such as Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES).

• TEEB for Local and Regional Policy Makers Report: full report chapters and quick guide available to download

TEEB Manual for Cities: Ecosystem Services in Urban Management

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability’s Cities Biodiversity Center and the TEEB for Local and Regional Policy Makers team partnered to create the TEEB Manual for Cities. This publication builds upon the TEEB reports, tailoring information specifically for cities, drawing on ICLEI and IUCN’s Local Action for Biodiversity Pioneer Project. The manual highlights how a focus on ecosystem services and their valuation can create direct benefits for cities. It also provides stepwise guidance on how to do this illustrated by in-depth case studies.

• TEEB Manual for Cities: Ecosystem Services in Urban Management: available to download

TEEB in Local and Regional Policy and Management

This volume of the Routledge’s TEEB publication series applies the key concepts of TEEB to local and regional policy and public management. The aim is to show that by taking nature’s benefits into account, decision makers can promote local development to ensure human well-being and economic growth and stability, while also maintaining environmental sustainability.

The book explores the potential for local development provided by an approach based on nature. It offers examples of successful implementation of this approach from across the world, highlighting the importance of local decision making in management and planning. It provides tools and practical guidance for reform, and throughout the volume the economic benefits of environmental consideration at a local level are expounded.

This book is intended to offer inspiration and practical suggestions for the improvement and sustainable management of the environment and human well-being. The local aspect of this book complements the focus of the previous three volumes, completing the set to provide a comprehensive approach to simultaneously improving and maintaining economic and environmental stability, as well as human well-being.

• The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Local and Regional Policy and Management: more information and online ordering from Routledge

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• Protecting Global Biodiversity in Hyderabad

The 18th annual UK meeting of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (ialeUK) will explore landscape ecology and ecosystem services.

Landscape ecology is the study of interactions, across space and time, between the structure and function of physical, biological and cultural components of landscapes; marine, freshwater, and on land.

The core aims of ialeUK are to promote and encourage: interest, learning and understanding of landscape ecology; inter-disciplinary research across the many fields in landscape ecology; and, communication between scientists, policy makers, planners and practitioners concerned with landscape ecology.

This international conference will be very much of the moment, with growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services, as heralded by initiatives such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and the UK Government’s recent Natural Environment White Paper.

Key questions that landscape ecology needs to address at a range of scales include: how drivers of change influence the dynamics of ecosystems; how biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services are inter-related; how we can measure ecosystem health; how we can measure the economic value of services and supporting systems.

The conference will consist of two days of presentations on science, policy and practice, networking events and workshops, followed by fieldtrips to the Long Mynd and Stiperstones, and the Black Country Living Landscape.

Conference registration and ialeUK membership

Registration is open until 12 August 2011.

If you are not already a member of ialeUK, it is worth doing so for the conference. The membership fee for joining for the conference, inclusive of 2012, is only £40 and attracts a discount of £60 on the fee for the whole conference or £45 for day delegates. Everyone attending the conference will receive a book of conference proceedings on arrival.

Further information, including a registration form and draft conference programme, is available to download from the ialeUK website.

For conference enquiries, please email to conference2011@iale.org.uk

Thursday 7 April 2011, 5pm (UK)

In a free webinar from Earthscan Patrick ten Brink and Pushpam Kumar, the editors of the first two volumes of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, will explore the economic value of nature, as well as the advantages and ethics of putting a price on our natural world.

• Understand the development of the concept of ecosystem services, and the TEEB framework used for their valuation;
• Discover how valuation of ecosystem services and biodiversity can help people rethink their relation to the natural environment;
• Explore the mechanisms and instruments by which incentives can be developed to protect biodiversity;
• Learn about policies in use around the world and a wide range of innovative solutions.

Register now for this free webinar – Thursday 7 April 2011, 17:00 (UK time – GMT), 12:00 (New York – EDT), 9:00 (San Francisco – PDT)

Our economics system takes ecosystem services for granted and does not put a value on them. These services include water and air quality regulation, nutrient cycling and decomposition, plant pollination and flood control. As a result, we – governments, businesses, and society as a whole – tend to neglect, waste and abuse the very basis on which our livelihoods and prosperity ultimately depend.

Patrick ten Brink and Pushpam Kumar will introduce the concept of ecosystem valuation and the challenges facing policy makers, as well as the range of innovative solutions possible. They will show that by making costs of ecosystem destruction visible – ‘putting nature on the balance sheets’ – we can fully comprehend the value of the natural world around us.

TEEB is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UENP) and supported by the European Commission, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), recently joined by Norway’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands’ Ministry of Housing (VROM), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and also the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

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

In this round-up:

• Putting TEEB into practice
• Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool

Read about more recent research in the latest SDRN bulletin…

Putting TEEB into practice

Recent initiatives such as the study on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) have highlighted the importance of better understanding the economic value of ecosystem services and developing instruments to capture and reward these values, thereby encouraging the wiser and sustainable use of our ecosystems.

To support the ‘TEEB philosophy’ WWF commissioned the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) to carry out a scoping assessment of how to put the key recommendations of the TEEB initiative into practice, through a case study on ecosystem services in the Danube River Basin, which drains a quarter of Europe and contains large areas of exceptional biodiversity value, yet is also home to some 83 million people.

The findings from the study highlight the obvious, and increasing, importance of a number of key ecosystem services in the Danube River Basin, such as carbon storage, water resource provision and cultural values that underpin tourism. Although their monetary values cannot be easily quantified it is clear that a precautionary approach to the conservation of ecosystem services should be followed.

Yet in practice, ecosystem services are often weak drivers in decision making because their values are often unknown or underestimated, and rarely fully captured in economic markets. Consequently, most of these services are being degraded or are at risk, largely as a result of unsustainable practices.

The study therefore demonstrates the urgent need to improve our knowledge of the relationships between ecosystem properties and the value of ecosystem services and for all policy instruments to be better targeted and integrated to encourage multi-functional land use that supports a balanced range of ecosystem services rather than those driven by short-term and narrow economic needs. This will require a focus on governance and institutions and increased communication and integration across different sectors.

More from the IEEP…

Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool

Sustainable forest management is a key challenge for local and global governance. The Forest Stewardship Council’s certification scheme has emerged as one of the solutions to global forest deterioration and is generally regarded as the prime example of certification as a global governance tool.

A recent study has examined the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation and the relationship between certification and governance institutions. The study finds that the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation is still limited due to the “stuck at the bottom” problem of developing countries, which are kept out of the certification process, and the market-driven nature of certification initiatives.

The article does not find a relationship between certification and governance institutions at the macro level. It does find, however, significant variation in certification uptake between countries, pointing to the potential of this policy tool.

The implications of the results are discussed in an article recently published in the Regulation and Governance journal.

More from Wiley online library…

The genesis of TEEB, our global study on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, lies in climate change. A meeting of G8+5 environment ministers at Potsdam, in 2007, proposed a study to assess the economic impact of the global loss of biodiversity in order to present a convincing economic case for conservation. Their inspiration was the Stern Review, published in the autumn of 2006, which had built upon the science of IPCC and presented a powerful economic case for early action on climate change.

A forest of questions

A veritable forest of questions and doubts quickly grew around this proposal from the Potsdam initiative.

Why extend a logic from the world of climate change to the world of wild Nature? Is it actually ethical to reduce biodiversity, which is about life, to mere economics? And why should the complex web of life, diverse and location-specific in character, lend itself to global economic analysis and modelling? Indeed, why should a Stern-like study be possible at all for biodiversity and ecosystems, when it is obvious that the underlying is irreducible to one variable, unlike greenhouse gases?

And isn’t the scientific understanding of ecosystem dynamics, and of the link between biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, too weak to support a study of economic implications? Is it appropriate to isolate ecosystem and biodiversity benefits and value them individually, and assume the whole does not exceed the sum of its parts? Is it appropriate to do so without projecting the effects of expected climate change on the nature and extent of ecosystem services? And even if all these issues were not sufficient deterrents for a study, why should an economic argument work for biodiversity conservation where ethical, spiritual and social arguments had not been sufficient? What could possibly make governments, businesses and society at large internalize such economics and make change happen, when the benefits lost or costs incurred are mostly in the form of public goods and services, which have no markets and no prices?

Furthermore, even if such economic assessment were possible, ethical and worthwhile, how can we actually evaluate costs, when there are no real alternatives to the living fabric of this planet?

The first point to appreciate is that none of the above questions and doubts is either irrelevant or unimportant for TEEB: this particular forest is alive and well. Indeed, it guides our thinking.

The problem and its root causes

The history of post-war economic growth has been one of unsustainable development: unsustainable for the planet’s ecosystems, for its species diversity, and indeed for the human race. By some recent yardsticks of sustainability, our global ecological footprint has doubled over the last 40 years, and now stands at 30 per cent higher than the Earth’s biological capacity to produce for our needs.

The ongoing degradation of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, especially observable in the post-war era, is a well-documented reality. Several reports, culminating in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, have presented the evidence of significant degradation, affecting 60 per cent of ecosystem services over the last 40 years.

These losses are attributed to habitat conversion, habitat fragmentation, climate change, hunting, invasive alien species and so on. These are the ‘proximate causes’ – or apparent reasons for biodiversity loss – and I distinguish them from ‘root causes’ – which are the drivers of these causes. Habitat conversion and fragmentation are human-induced land-use changes made to feed and house a growing population with dramatically growing per-capita consumption, and not enough care for the materials-intensity of production. Climate change is now very widely accepted as anthropogenic. And the most destructive examples of loss through invasive alien species are by-products of human intervention.

Thus the root causes of biodiversity loss lie in the nature of the human relationship with nature, and in our dominant economic model. We have not widely understood that our survival depends on co-existence, on living in harmony with nature. And in general, although there are many exceptions that TEEB highlights, our dominant economic model promotes and rewards more versus better consumption, private versus public wealth creation, human-made capital versus natural capital. This is the ‘triple-whammy’ of self-reinforcing biases that leads us to uphold and promote an economic model in which we tend to extract without fear of limits, consume without awareness of consequences and produce without responsibility for third-party costs, the so-called ‘externalities’ of business.

Of course, we would not adopt any such damaging behaviours if our relationship with nature were one of co-existence and responsible stewardship, as is still the case with some forest-dependent tribal communities. However, increasing urbanization, which creates both physical and emotional distance from nature, and our dominant ‘take–make–waste’ economic model with its inherent biases have long ago defeated that possibility. We now enter, in the words of Winston Churchill, a ‘period of consequences’. Ecological scarcities, ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are affecting us severely around the world, causing water and food shortages, socio-political stress, economic damage and persistent poverty, as well as increasing the level of ecological, social and economic risks that we as well as future generations will have to manage in our search for well-being for all.

The search for solutions

There is nowadays an increasing level of awareness that something is very wrong, and that human society needs to change in fundamental ways in order to solve any of the problems described above. From many directions, fingers are being pointed at the recent economic crisis, itself a result of crises in fuel, food and finance, and at the parallel crisis in our ecological and climate commons, suggesting that both share a common cause: our failed economic model.

Occasionally, some may conclude that our systems merely need a ‘reboot’, and that we do not fundamentally need to change. Many other voices however are arguing for trenchant changes in society and its economic model. There is also a growing view among mainstream political leadership that both the dominant economic model and the accounts of society are in need of serious change.

More and more frequently we hear of the need to reform society in fundamental ways: to include natural and human capital formation and destruction in the accounts of society; to expand the reach of markets in order to enable payments for ecosystem services; to tax what we take (resources) and not what we make (profits from goods and services); and so on. These are all big changes, each of which would address the ‘root causes’ of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.

The challenge, as always, is change and its many dimensions: its nature, its extent and scale, its speed and its unintended consequences. TEEB’s review and synthesis of the literature on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, our key messages, and our recommendations to end-users are all intended to be a part of that change.

Our approach in recommending changes is to favour pragmatism over perfectionism, discrete planned changes over ‘creative destruction’ or other adventurous alternatives, common sense and the principle of equity over ‘free market fundamentalism’, and solutions that have an immediate start and a foreseeable medium-term outcome over solutions that may take ages to negotiate and may not deliver results until after it is too late. Observation and recognition of the value of nature’s benefits to society is at the heart of our recommended solutions. Economic valuation, in particular, can help communicate the value of nature to diverse groups of decision makers using the language of the world’s dominant economic and political paradigm.

‘Mainstreaming’ TEEB

To summarize, modern society’s predominant focus on market-delivered components of well-being, and its almost total dependence on market prices to indicate value means that we generally do not measure or manage economic value that is exchanged other than through markets, such as the public goods and services that comprise a large part of nature’s flows to our economies. Society generally also ignores third-party effects of private exchanges (so-called ‘externalities’) unless they are actually declared illegal. TEEB has assembled much evidence that the economic invisibility of nature’s flows into the economy is a significant contributor to the degradation of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity. This in turn leads to serious human and economic costs which are being felt now, have been felt for much of the last half-century, and will be felt at an accelerating pace if we continue ‘business as usual’.

Lord Stern’s review of the Economics of Climate Change showed that there is significant carry in quantitative evaluations (as against just pleas to humanitarianism and common sense, no matter how well argued) which present an argument for change in economic terms. TEEB finds the corresponding case for valuing ecosystems and biodiversity to be more complex and less consensual, multi-layered in terms of services, multi-scaled in terms of beneficiaries, location-specific in terms of the underlying biodiversity, and generally uncertain in terms of our understanding of the dynamics of ecosystems and the links between resilience and biodiversity. However, TEEB argues that the right ethical choice is to compute these imperfect valuations for society to use, illustrated with good examples (which are increasingly being seen) and judicious guidance on how, in what context, and for what purpose to use them.

Valuations are a powerful ‘feedback mechanism’ for a society that has distanced itself from the biosphere upon which its very health and survival depends. Economic valuation, in particular, communicates the value of Nature to society in the language of the world’s dominant economic and political model. Mainstreaming this thinking and bringing it to the attention of policy makers, administrators, businesses and citizens is in essence the central purpose of TEEB.

What issue is the National Ecosystem Assessment addressing?

People benefit from the environment in a wide range of ways, all of which are valuable, but only some of which are currently traded in markets and accounted for. For example, in the UK we get natural resources like minerals, food, timber, fibre and other raw materials. We also receive services from the natural environment. The value of flood risk management from wetlands has been estimated at £1,279/ha/yr and pollination supports food production in the UK to the value of £1bn per year.

Traditionally, environmental policy has focused on specific issues or parts of the environment. There is now stronger evidence for how the natural environment operates as a system, providing a range of services and materials to society. This offers the opportunity to use and manage our ‘natural capital’ in a way that maximises the range of services and resources it can sustainably provide.

Regulation has significantly reduced levels of environmental pollution in our air and water and protected our most precious wildlife sites.  However, changing and increasing pressures on our environment continue to cause problems, which in turn have social and economic impacts.

Defra wants to encourage a wider understanding of the value of the natural environment to society and the economy. By incorporating a wide range of environmental values into policies and decisions, we can make them more robust, efficient and positive for a wide variety of organisations and individuals.

What’s the evidence for all of this?

Several major initiatives provide evidence for this, including:

• Internationally: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) provides a detailed examination of the economic costs of biodiversity decline and ecosystem service loss globally. Its findings were reported last month at the Nagoya biodiversity summit.
• Nationally: The National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) is the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and future economic prosperity. It is considering all terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems. The NEA brings together a large interdisciplinary team of social, economic and natural scientists to collate and reanalyse existing evidence on the state and value of our natural environment and the services it provides. It is being funded by several partners across the UK (see below).
• In addition the Countryside Survey Integrated Assessment report was published on 27 October. The Integrated Assessment uses Countryside Survey data to investigate the ecosystem services provided by the British countryside.

What are the key messages emerging from the analysis of the National Ecosystems Assessment so far?

Key messages emerging from Phase 1 of the National Ecosystem Assessment were published on 18^th October. Work done so far has highlighted how and why different aspects of our environment are changing in quality and quantity. It has also demonstrated the benefits we receive from our biodiversity and habitats.

The full results and analysis will be made publicly available in Spring 2011. Emerging findings from Phase 1 of the NEA show that:

• There have been real improvements in air and water quality over the last few decades.
• There is increased recognition of the emotional and physical health benefits of access to green space.
• We are getting much more food from our farmland and, more recently, other benefits too – like increased diversity in arable landscapes .
• Some of the overlooked aspects of our wildlife are doing many more ‘hidden’ things for us, such as cycling nutrients through the food chain. We need to find out more about trends in these species before we can fully understand just how valuable they are.

Speaking about the publication of NEA key messages, Professor Bob Watson, Defra’s Chief Scientific Advisor and NEA co-chair said:

“I am pleased to see the publication of early results from this important study, which helps us to look around us at our natural environment in a really new way.  It highlights not only the immense value of nature, but also points to the challenges we face in maintaining and enhancing that value in future.  As such it will be a valuable part of our work in developing the White Paper on the Natural Environment. I hope that this document will stimulate further discussion amongst experts across many disciplines in the coming few months.”

Why is it important to value the natural environment?

The environment is considered ‘intrinsically’ valuable by many people, who feel there is a moral obligation to protect it. However the idea of also placing a monetary value on aspects of the environment can help. Properly incorporating the value of nature into our decisions and policies, as well as remembering its intrinsic worth, should enhance our ability to convince a wider variety of people to work with nature.

An ecosystems approach provides a more integrated approach to environmental management and decision making, which helps to preserve both the ecosystems themselves and the valuable services they provide.

How can we integrate this approach?

This Government is committed to becoming the greenest government ever. Defra is playing a key role in this by ensuring sustainable development and natural value are factored in to everything we do. This will ensure eyes are fixed firmly on the long term in relation to the economy, the environment and society.

Defra is doing this in a number of ways:

• The Natural Value Programme aims to integrate the value of the natural environment and use of an ecosystems approach in Defra, other Government Departments, at a local level, and in business.
• The Natural Environment White Paper will be published in Spring 2011. It will make a case for how we can best protect and enhance our natural environment and the valuable services we derive from it.

How can I get involved?

If you would like further information about this work then contact Defra’s Natural Environment Strategic Unit: ecosystems@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Further reading

Three other documents were published on 18 October alongside the NEA Key Messages:

• What nature can do for you: a practical introduction to making the most of natural services, assets and resources in policy and decision making (pdf)
  A guide for policy makers on an ecosystems approach. This is a practical introduction to making the most of natural services, assets and resources in policy and decision making. An executive brochure for What nature can do for you has also been published.
• Towards a deeper understanding of nature’s value: Encouraging an interdisciplinary approach towards evidence about the value of the natural environment (pdf)
  Analysis of the evidence base on the value of the natural environment.
• Payments for ecosystem services: a short introduction (pdf)
  Sets out key definitions and broad principles for payments for ecosystems, outlining further work that is planned in Defra.

In this round-up:

• Banking on biodiversity: a natural way out of poverty (IIED)
• Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature (TEEB)
• Living Planet Report 2010: Biodiversity, biocapacity and development (WWF)

Read about more recent publications in the latest SDRN bulletin…

Banking on biodiversity: a natural way out of poverty

Nature’s riches can play a major role in poverty eradication, but only if governments and businesses recognise the true economic value of the goods and services our environment provides us.

This is the central message of a free book published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), BirdLife International and Pavan Sukhdev — leader of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study. It warns that biodiversity loss is not only an environmental problem but also a fundamental threat to people’s livelihoods, wellbeing and ability to confront the impacts of climate change. The book shows how nature provides humanity with goods and services worth trillions of dollars, but warns that these benefits are threatened by policies that fail to treat the environment and human wellbeing as two sides of the same coin.

While millions of the world’s poorest people depend heavily on nature for their livelihoods, efforts to use biodiversity to boost incomes often fail — because of poor policies and legal frameworks that govern how biological resources are used and by whom.

The book outlines the economic, scientific and moral arguments for shifting to a new way of managing the Earth’s resources that brings benefits to all in a sustainable way. It argues that biological resources can lift people out of poverty and help countries to build green economies but says that, for this to happen, the true value of biodiversity must be included in economic valuations and government policies.

More from the IIED…

Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature

The final report of the two-year international ‘The Economics and Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) study has been launched, calling for wider recognition of nature’s contribution to human livelihoods, health, security, and culture by decision-makers at all levels (local to national and business to citizens).

TEEB promotes the demonstration, and where appropriate, the capture of the economic values of nature’s services through an array of policy instruments and mechanisms.

In TEEB’s final report, there are three scenarios: a natural ecosystem (forests), a human settlement (city), and a business sector (mining), to illustrate how the economic concepts and tools described in TEEB can help equip society with the means to incorporate the values of nature into decision-making at all levels. The report drives home the message that failure of business to account for the value of natural capital, particularly in sectors such as mining, can pose significant business and social risks.

The UK-based consultancy, TruCost, estimated that the negative impacts, or ‘environmental externalities’, of the world’s top 3,000 listed companies totals around US$ 2.2 trillion annually. Approaches such as Net Positive Impact, wetland mitigation and bio-banking can help ensure that developers take responsibility for their environmental footprint. As consumers and governments opt for greener purchasing choices the business sector also stands to make considerable gains: by 2020 the annual market size for certified agricultural products is expected to be US$210 billion; payments for water related ecosystem services US$6 billion; and voluntary biodiversity offsets in the region of US$100 million a year.

More from TEEB…

Living Planet Report 2010: Biodiversity, biocapacity and development

The Living Planet Report seeks to raise public awareness of the pressures on the biosphere and spread the message that ‘business as usual’ is not an option. It relates the Living Planet Index (a measure of the health of the world’s biodiversity) to the Ecological Footprint and Water Footprint (measures of humanity’s demands on the Earth’s natural resources).

For the first time, this year’s report examines trends in biodiversity by country income, highlighting significant rates of biodiversity loss in low income countries. Using a new Footprint Scenario Calculator developed by the Global Footprint Network, the report presents various future scenarios based on different variables related to resource consumption, land use and productivity.

Scenarios based on different food consumption patterns and energy mixes illustrate immediate actions that could close the gap between Ecological Footprint and biocapacity – and also some of the dilemmas and decisions these entail.

More from WWF…

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.”

To accompany the Global Business of Biodiversity conference and recent release of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study’s report for business, Defra’s Natural Environment Policy team highlighted available resources for incorporating the value of the natural environment and biodiversity into decision making.

Helping others understand the importance of biodiversity and the natural environment

• Recovery Growth and the Environment (Defra)
  Supporting the environment, greener business and enabling economic recovery.
• Corporate Ecosystem Valuation (World Business Council for Sustainable Development)
  Building the business case for incorporating the value of ecosystems into business decision making.
• Water Energy and Climate Change: A contribution from the business community (WBCSD)
  Water, energy and climate change are inextricably linked: case studies and policy recommendations from business.
• Natural Solutions (Joint Nature Conservation Committee)
  How nature provides innovative designs, materials and processes which have had a revolutionary impact on human well-being.

Incorporating resource efficiency and ecosystem services into business thinking

• EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) (European Commission)
  Management tool for companies and other organisations to evaluate, report, and improve their environmental performance.
• Can you afford not to? Business success in the low carbon economy (tomorrow’s company)
• The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (World Resources Institute)
  Guidelines for Identifying business risks and opportunities arising from ecosystem change.
• Global Water Tool (WBCSD)
  A free tool for companies and organisations to map their water use and assess risks relative to their global operations and supply chains.

Valuing parts of the natural environment or ecosystem services

• An introductory Guide to valuing ecosystem services (Defra)
• Valuing Environmental Impacts: Practical Guidelines for the Use of Value Transfer in Policy and Project Appraisal (Defra)

The evidence

• The National Ecosystem Assessment
  The first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and our continuing prosperity.
• The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
  Major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.

What government is doing

• The ecosystems approach action plan
  Securing a healthy natural environment and Delivering a healthy natural environment summarise the work that government has been doing to apply an ecosystem approach in its work.

Further information

The Defra Natural Environment Policy webpages contain a number of other resources to help answer many of these questions including further case studies and information on where to find the data you might need to undertake ecosystem service valuation.