UN Business Case For Protecting Biodiversity Is Nonsense

Posted on 13. Jul, 2010 by Ross in Climate Change, Policy News

After the success of energy efficiency scaling it’s way onto the agenda of corporate boardrooms across the world by connecting green credentials to a solid business case, other areas of environmental concern have begun to try to emulate that success. Renewable energy, sustainability and biodiversity protection have all been trying to connect their agendas to increased profitability and green corporate growth.

Biodiversity protection has been trying too hard though, judging by today’s UN Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) report. Aimed at business leaders, the TEEB for Business document (PDF) attempts to highlight $2-6 trillion in sustainability-related natural resource business opportunities globally by 2050, whilst bemoaning that only 2% of the top 100 companies saw biodiversity as a key strategic issue.

With the kind of business case displayed in this document though, it’s hardly surprising that biodiversity is still almost non-existent on the corporate agenda. Despite being launched with the fanfare of ‘biodiversity loss poses a greater business risk than climate change’, the costs and opportunities examined by the document are overwhelmingly dominated by climate change, and nowhere in the document sums this up better than it’s very first table:

Table 1: Relationship between biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services
Biodiversity	Ecosystem goods and services (examples)	Economic values (examples)
Ecosystems (variety & extent/area)	Recreation Water regulation Carbon storage	Avoiding GHG emissions by conserving forests: US$ 3.7 trillion (NPV)
Species (diversity & abundance)	Food, fibre, fuel Design inspiration Pollination	Contribution of insect pollinators to agricultural output: ~US$ 190 billion/year
Genes (variability & population)	Medicinal discovery Disease resistance Adaptive capacity	25-50% of the US$ 640 billion pharmaceutical market is derived from genetic resources

As you can see, when it comes to the numbers the carbon offsetting market dwarfs the projected value of other areas. The report also stresses the importance of Copenhagen’s REDD project in conserving biodiversity, but acknowledges that it’s principle purpose is to combat climate change.

This would be bad enough as an attempt to push biodiversity up the corporate agenda, but hard-nosed examination exposes even greater flaws in the logic. Fighting climate change through forestry offsets doesn’t require biodiversity, only forestry - any old tree will do, to a certain extent. Most agricultural crops aren’t fussy about being pollinated by a range of different insects - if a few thousands species get wiped out, there’s still plenty of other insects ready to do the job.

Organic foods (highlighted as a major success story of championing biodiversity and the main biodiversity business opportunity of the future) only results in greater biodiversity when replacing industrial farming - clearing more wild landscapes for organic farming can be just as damaging for local ecosystems, and larger agricultural players are likely to step up their involvement in the organic food market over the coming years too.

Tourism and genetic prospecting are the two main areas for which a genuine maintenance of biodiversity is important from a business perspective. Other concerns can be met without biodiversity being protected, providing biological systems operate as effectively with a greater degree of species homogeneity, such as reforestation.

If biodiversity protection wants to break away from philanthropy and move firmly into the business world, it’s going to have to try a lot harder than this. Green tacticians beware: let your business case stand on it’s own two feet, and beware competition from less noble alternatives. To many business people any bee is just a bee, any frog is just a frog, and any tree is just a bank note waiting to be printed or an offset to be bought.

Image by Ross Tucknott @ Flickr