Will putting a price on biodiversity help nature conservation? Some delegates at the COP 16 biodiversity conference in Colombia this year thought so. But how can you measure something which, by definition, is diverse? How much is a tree worth when compared with a lion?
In December I read a paper on just this issue, entitled “What is a unit of nature? Measurement challenges in the emerging biodiversity credit market.” It does a good job in studying the problems of definition and recognises that the context is more social and political than ecological. The authors conclude that if there is a real contribution to biodiversity and genuine attempts to avoid damage have been undertaken:
“… as long as biodiversity credit investment does not replace public policy effort, and as long as Indigenous peoples and local communities hold the decision-making power regarding whether and how projects go ahead, a contributions-based biodiversity credits market could be positive for nature.”
Unfortunately, the authors have confined themselves to writing about the biodiversity credit market. It is as if the tools they are promoting will only be used for the good cause of increasing total biodiversity. They dismiss the market in biodiversity offsets in a few words. However, offsets are likely to be hugely more important than credits, as we have seen in the carbon market. And carbon trading is often just an excuse for continued pollution. Why would biodiversity be different?
I was reminded of this paper when I read Raynor Winn’s Landlines over Christmas. As well as the personal story of love in the face of adversity, one of the themes of the book is biodiversity, or rather the damage being done to it. In places, Raynor and her partner Moth, walk through vast arable fields; the path, bordered by multicoloured flowers, is the only relief from the monotonous monocultures.
Raynor laments our inability to maintain biodiversity and hints at the reason. In a restaurant in Inverie, she overhears two city traders talking.
“… the whole idea of a green future is nonsense. We all know that no policy comes into force simply because it’s the right thing to do. Policy follows finance, not the other way round. We do the deals, then governments sell themselves as having a green agenda, but only when they are sure there is money to be made…. I mean, look how we cashed in on carbon trading.”
Are biodiversity credits and offsets merely the next deal for city traders then? It is easier for businesses to offset rather than avoid or mitigate biodiversity loss.
As the Biodiversity Market Mirage report says, if the objective is to make money, biodiversity conservation will be driven by business plans and not ecological imperatives. Indigenous peoples and local communities, particularly in the Global South, will be obliged to make more space for nature. Yet, it is they who have contributed the least to the loss of biodiversity.
I have also been reading Johnathan Coe’s new novel The Proof of my Innocence. It is a cosy crime thriller, but, like all of Coe’s novels has a political sub-plot. In it, he too writes about the nefarious influence of finance but from a much broader perspective, tracing it back to the 1960 foundation of Young Americans for Freedom which promoted market freedom and limited government. Its ideas were initially out of step with the hippy spirit of the times. But by the 1980s, both Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher were in power. Since then, the instinct of conservative politicians has been to give markets more freedom. Which means that problems like climate change and biodiversity loss are seen from a financial rather than a social or ecological viewpoint.
I interpret this to mean that the creation of carbon markets and now, biodiversity markets is a part of a wider phenomenon, wished upon us by the New Right: the financialisation of life, the universe and everything. Politicians, and not just those on the left, need to take back control. People count! So does nature.
Credit for header image: A sampling of fungi collected during summer 2008 in Northern Saskatchewan mixed woods, near LaRonge. Author=Sasata. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons.