"The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Report for Business,"or "TEEB Report for Business," is not unlike the many documents that have made the connection between global climate change and the threats and opportunities it poses for business. (Bishop, Joshua et al. July 2010. "TEEB – The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Report for Business - Executive Summary 2010." Teebweb.org Accessed July 16, 2010.)
Like so many carbon market analyses, the report highlights growing voluntary markets. Similar to the arguments for offsetting carbon footprints, the report makes the case that consumers will increasingly want a smaller "ecological footprint." Like so many carbon sequestration projects, the report highlights how innovative businesses will fare well in this new social environment. But unlike all those previous reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or conservation organizations or carbon analysts, this report is about biodiversity.
What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity is short for biological diversity. Simply put, biodiversity stands for the incredible variety of life forms on planet Earth. If ecosystem services are life support, then biodiversity is the engine that drives those services.
Biodiversity exists at at least four different scales. At the genetic level, it means the diversity of DNA and genes that code for variable traits in organisms. At the species level, it means the diversity of different kinds of organisms. At the population level, it means the number and diversity of separate interbreeding groups of the same species - and it is the separateness of populations which often leads to variance in traits between populations. At the ecosystem level, it means the diversity of conditions, habitats and processes that combine to create different ecosystems.
Good News for Biodiversity
An international focus on biodiversity and ecosystem services is complementary to a focus on global climate change. To combat climate change, the world is seeking to create an accord that will limit greenhouse gas emissions. One of the primary means of doing so has been to create mandatory and voluntary markets for carbon emissions credits. In these markets, “offsets” that counteract carbon emissions can be achieved through technology, but above all through carbon sequestration in grasses and trees.
How does this relate to biodiversity conservation? Aside from the obvious effects of climate change on biodiversity, carbon markets themselves have vast potential to affect biodiversity. A world focused solely on climate change and carbon markets will skew conservation tactics toward carbon sequestration, potentially to the detriment of all else. Markets, after all, focus with laser-like precision on profit-making ventures. If there is more profit in monotypic non-native tree plantations than in preserving rain forests or planting a mixture of native species, there will be little incentive for attending to biodiversity.
However, a world focused on climate change along with biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) is likely to structure its markets and profit-making activities in a more ecologically sustainable way. Folks at The Bay Bank, an online marketplace for ecosystem services transactions, say it best: "Ecosystem markets do not operate in isolation from one another - one conservation action has the potential to develop credits for sale in multiple market spaces. For example, a riparian forest buffer may generate nutrient reduction credits, carbon credits, and habitat credits." (Baybank.org Accessed July 16, 2010).
The "TEEB Report for Business" makes clear at the outset that the main reason biodiversity markets are beneficial is to counteract "the economic invisibility of nature's flow into the economy." The authors point out that "our almost total dependence on market prices to indicate value" means that when pure water, beautiful forests, or abundant species are considered priceless - this may well be the same thing as worthless. "Economic valuations, in particular, communicate the value of ecosystems and biodiversity . . . in the language of the world's dominant economic and political model."
The UN Establishes a "Biodiversity Panel"
In 2007, the UN Environmental Program’s IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." (NobelPrize.org accessed July 16, 2010).
The month prior to release of the TEEB Report for Business, a historic meeting in Busan, South Korea resulted in the decision to establish a similar intergovernmental panel for biodiversity (June 11, 2010. “Breakthrough in International Year of Biodiversity as Governments Give Green Light to New Gold Standard Science Policy Body.” IPBES.net Accessed July 16, 2010). The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was endorsed by many world governments, among them, the U.S., the EU, and Brazil.
If the IPBES follows in its IPCC cousin’s footsteps, it has the potential to do for biodiversity what the IPCC has done for climate change: at long last make it a household word.
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