from a friend, not directly about sound but inescapably related;
Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7662565.stm
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of
forests
than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned
study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5
trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that
forests
perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern
Review
into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World
Conservation
Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to
fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems
and
species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of
Threatened
Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan
Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the
financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening
every
year, year after year," he told BBC News.
Teeb will... show the risks we run by not valuing [nature]
adequately."
Andrew Mitchell
Global Canopy Programme
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within
the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at
today's rate
we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every
year."
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU
presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that
forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase
will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature
stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through
building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or
farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the
poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the
forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through
losing a
natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into
the
political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their
policy
choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will
lay open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the
slide in
biodiversity.
"The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to
reality," said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy
Programme, an
organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest
preservation.
"Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we
run
by not valuing it adequately."
A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are
beginning to
direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in
natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade,
although it
is clearly very early days.
Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of
the services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that
decades
of trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic
worth
of nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.
Whether Mr Sukhdev's arguments will find political traction in an era of
financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the
governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection
are the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review.
But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.
"Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago,
their eyes
would glaze over.
"Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so
how do you calculate this, how can we monetize it, what can we do
about it,
why don't you speak with so and so politician or such and such
business."
The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the
date by
which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological
Diversity to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.
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