Bloomberg Green

March 21, 2021
Global businesses sourcing commodities such as cattle, soybeans or rubber stand to lose some $53 billion due to deforestation unless they take action.

In a survey of more than 500 global businesses, climate-disclosure platform CDP identified risks such as extreme weather, changes in consumer preferences, as well as market and reputational impacts from commodity-related forest loss. It would cost $6.6 billion in the coming years to address those risks, the London-based nonprofit said in a report Monday.

“The destruction of the world’s vital forests poses huge risks to the climate, nature, the economy, and also increases the risk of future pandemics,” Sareh Forouzesh, CDP’s associate director of forests, said in a statement. “There is a solid business case for companies sourcing commodities sustainably and taking steps to protect forests.”

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Campaign For Nature

March 22, 2021

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new report that--for the first time--provides conclusive evidence that investments in renewable energy and biodiversity conservation do more to boost a country’s GDP than investments in fossil fuels and activities that destroy ecosystems. The findings laid out in the IMF Working Paper, Building Back Better: How Big Are Green Spending Multipliers?, are based on a new international dataset that is the first to gather and compare the impacts on GDP of spending on green and non-eco-friendly energy and land use.

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Thomson Reuters Foundation

March 11, 2021
Conservationists and environment officials hope new U.N. standards to measure the value of nature can help governments slow the rapid decline of plant and animal species worldwide.

Adopted this week by the U.N. Statistical Commission, the accounting system comes as a global movement gathers pace to protect the natural world by valuing the contributions forests, wetlands and other ecosystems make to economies and societies.

The benefits of preserving nature, such as reducing carbon emissions, producing water and boosting resilience to extreme weather, exceed the value of exploiting it, according to a study published this week in the Nature Sustainability journal.

If Nepal's Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park were turned from forest into farmland, for instance, instead of boosting the economy, it would create an $11-million annual deficit by cutting carbon storage 60% and water quality 88%, researchers estimated.

So how can the monetary value of nature be measured, and what does it mean for global efforts to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss?

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European Commission

March 11, 2021
A new statistical framework to better account for biodiversity and ecosystems in national economic planning and policy decision-making, approved yesterday, allows countries worldwide to use a common set of rules and methods to track changes in ecosystems and their services. The European Commission supported the United Nations in the development of this framework with contributions from scientists, statisticians and policymakers. The new framework goes beyond the commonly used statistic of gross domestic product (GDP) and ensures that natural capital accounts—the contributions of forests, oceans and other ecosystems—complements existing economic accounts.

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International Institute for Sustainable Development

March 8, 2021
The UK Government has published an independent review that provides a global assessment of the economic benefits of biodiversity and the costs of biodiversity loss, and recommends actions to simultaneously enhance biodiversity and deliver economic prosperity.

In 2019, the UK Government commissioned Cambridge University economist Partha Dasgupta to provide a global review on the economics of biodiversity. Following the publication of an interim report in April 2020, the final publication titled, ‘The Economics of Biodiversity: the Dasgupta Review,’ was issued ahead of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The publication’s formal launch, hosted by the Royal Society, took place on 2 February 2021.   

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PhysOrg

March 8, 2021
The economic benefits of conserving or restoring natural sites "outweigh" the profit potential of converting them for intensive human use, according to the largest-ever study comparing the value of protecting nature at particular locations with that of exploiting it.

A research team led by the University of Cambridge and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) analysed dozens of sites—from Kenya to Fiji and China to the UK—across six continents. A previous breakthrough study in 2002 only had information for five sites.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, come just weeks after a landmark report by Cambridge Professor Partha Dasgupta called for the value of biodiversity to be placed at the heart of global economics.

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Forbes

February 4, 2021
“We are embedded in Nature” and “nature is more than a mere economic good”, writes Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta in the new publication commissioned by the UK Treasury.

“Nature nurtures and nourishes us, so we will think of assets as durable entities that not only have use value, but may also have intrinsic worth.”

Dasgupta’s review presents the first comprehensive economic framework of its kind for biodiversity. And possibly the most prestigious one.

Back in 2019, the UK Government commissioned Dasgupta to lead an independent, global review on the economics of biodiversity. After an interim report in April 2020, the study was officially launched on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Royal Society and attended by the Prince of Wales, UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson and David Attenborough.

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Associated Press

February 2, 2021
A report commissioned by the British government is urging a radical transformation in the way that countries around the world assess the state of their economies by elevating the natural world as a key element in their economic planning.

The review of the economics of biodiversity by Professor Partha Dasgupta concludes that nature needs to become as valued as traditional gauges of economic wealth such as profits in the future.

In the 600-page review that was commissioned in 2019 by Britain’s Treasury, the University of Cambridge economist warned that current economic growth and prosperity have “come at a devastating cost to nature.” He said declines in biodiversity and the environment’s ability to provide food, clean water and air are “fueling extreme risk and uncertainty for our economies and well-being.”

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The New York Times

February 2, 2021
The global system is built on buying and selling, but often, no one pays for the most basic goods and services that sustain life — water to drink, soil to grow food, clean air to breathe, rain forests that regulate the climate.

Continuing to ignore the value of nature in our global economy threatens humanity itself, according to an independent report on biodiversity and economics, commissioned by the British government and issued Tuesday. The study, led by Partha Dasgupta, a Cambridge University economist, is the first comprehensive review of its kind.

“Even while we have enjoyed the fruits of economic growth, the demand we have made on nature’s goods and services has for some decades exceeded her ability to supply them on a sustainable basis,” Mr. Dasgupta said. “The gap has been increasing, threatening our descendants’ lives.”

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Reuters

February 2, 2021
Humans have built up their economic wealth by going hugely overdrawn with the bank of nature, which is in deep trouble and must be reassessed as a valuable and finite asset, an academic review commissioned by the British government said on Tuesday.

The Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity concludes that standard monetary measures of prosperity, such as gross domestic product, have excluded vital services provided by natural systems, such as water provision and climate protection.

As a result, forests, oceans and the wildlife they sustain have become dangerously degraded to a point that seriously threatens human society, as well as plants and animals.

To rectify this, business, governments and other institutions should boost efforts to price and understand the value of what nature provides and the costs of its loss, while easing unsustainable pressure on natural resources, the report said.

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Campaign For Nature

February 2, 2021
Destined to be as critically important as the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review was commissioned by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was released on February 2. 

The Dasgupta Review marks a major inflection point in global political economic discourse that puts forward a new economic paradigm in the same way that Adam Smith did in his time. The review calls for urgent and transformative change in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity, and the natural world. As decision makers worldwide begin to rebuild economies in the wake of Covid 19, this Review should be a guide and catalyst for fundamental change.

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Bangkok Post

December 21, 2020
Climate mitigation technologies that harness natural processes to reduce or remove greenhouse gas -- plays an important role in mitigating the devastating effects of global warming, which is expected to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2030 and 2052, according to the projection by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Global warming has contributed to sea level rise and increased incidences of extreme and deadly weather events, researchers have found.

With the potential mitigation impact of 11 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually, NCS can provide over a third of the mitigation action needed to meet the Paris agreement targets by 2030, says the report issued by Conservation International, DBS Bank, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Temasek.

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Project Syndicate

October 13, 2020
From the energy industry to industrial agriculture, the private sector has long reaped large financial rewards from environmental destruction. But the costs of that destruction are growing, and businesses' responsibility – and motivation – to reverse it becoming more apparent.

The latest edition of the United Nations’ Global Biodiversity Outlook, published by the Convention on Biological Diversity, makes for bleak reading. As the report notes, biodiversity is essential to address climate change, ensure long-term food security, and prevent future pandemics. And yet the world is missing every target that has been established to protect it. If this is to change, business must step up.

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Northglen News

October 13, 2020
World Economic Forum has drawn the attention of the global business community to the critical relationship that exists between nature conservation and the state of the world economy.

In a video message released today, research findings show that it would cost the world just $140 billion a year to protect 30% of the planet from destruction. That’s less than what the world spends each year on video games and less than a third of what governments spend on subsidizing activities that destroy nature. This is also a fraction of the $10 trillion that was spent on Covid-19 packages in the first two months of the pandemic.

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Forbes

October 6, 2020
There is no future for business as usual. Our current economic system, which arguably has succeeded in creating unprecedented economic output, wealth and human welfare over the past 70 years, has led to exacerbated social inequalities and loss of nature at an extent that threatens the stability of our economies and societies – and could maybe even lead to a collapse of civilisation as we know it.

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