Joanne C. Burgess

Paradise lost? : the ecological economics of biodiversity

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Preface 1. Background and Overview Biodiversity as a Conservation and Scientific Issue Current Status and Prospects The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity 2. Ecological and Economic Implications of Biodiversity Loss Ecological Implications Economic Implications Summary and Conclusions: Implications for Sustainability 3. Ecological and Economic Perspectives: Convergence or Divergence? How Ecology Approaches the Problem How Economics Approaches the Problem The Pros and Cons of a Single-Discipline Approach 4. Driving Forces for Biodiversity Loss Proximate and Underlying Causes: an Overview Population Pressure Economic Incentives Institutions Culture and Ethics Part I Implications, Driving forces and perspectives Part II Analysis of Selected Systems 5. Forests Identification and Analysis Management and Policy Challenges to be Addressed 6. Wetlands Identification and Analysis Management and Policy Challenges to be Addressed 7. Estuarine and Marine Ecosystems Identification and Analysis Management and Policy Challenges to be Addressed 8. Rangelands Identification and Analysis Management and Policy Challenges to be Addressed Part III Lessons for Management and Policy 9. Instruments and Tools for Biodiversity Conservation System Boundaries and Limits: When do they Matter? Safeguards for the Future: When do they Apply? Regulations and Markets: When do they Work? Challenges to be Addressed 10. Policies and Institutions for Biodiversity Conservation International Management and Incentives Regional and National Management Local Management Challenges to be Addressed Part IV CONCLUSIONS 11. Paradise Regained: The Challenges Ahead Is a Single-Discipline Approach Sufficient? Towards an Ecological-Economiscy Synthesis The Challenges Ahead Glossary O f Selected Ecological and Economical Terms Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations References Index

Depletion of the global carbon budget: a user cost approach

The Fifth IPCC Assessment Report estimates the worlds ‘carbon budget’, which is the cumulative amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions limiting global warming below 2°C. We model this carbon budget as a resource asset depleted by annual GHG emissions, and estimate the user cost associated with depletion. For constant emissions, social welfare increases US

Sustainable Development: An Economic Perspective

3.3 trillion (6 per cent of global GDP) over the business as usual scenario of growing emissions, and the carbon budgets lifetime increases from 18 to 21 years. For declining emissions, the gain is US

How to pay for saving biodiversity

10.4 trillion (19 per cent of global GDP), and the budgets lifetime is 30 years. Extending indefinitely the lifetime of the carbon budget would require emissions to fall exponentially by 4.8 per cent or more. Although the Paris Agreement abatement pledges will generate social gains of US

Response—Conservation accord

2–2.5 trillion (4–5 per cent of world GDP), they are insufficient to prevent depletion of the 2°C global carbon budget by 2030.

Policies to support environmental risk management in investment decisions

Sustainable development is concerned with meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Recent advances in three areas of the sustainable development literature are ecosystem services and resilience; environmental Kuznets curves and environment–growth relationships; and technological innovation, endogenous growth, and resource dependency. Progress toward sustainable development requires measuring the social, ecological, and economic impact of declining natural resources; improving our estimates of the costs of depleting natural capital; establishing appropriate incentives, institutions, and investments for sustainable management of natural capital; and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Economics of Tropical Deforestation

Can private sector involvement in a global agreement help to conserve global biodiversity? The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was one of the first international environmental agreements negotiated. In the same year, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for funding biodiversity conservation in developing countries was launched. Yet 25 years later, biological populations and diversity continue to decline both on land (1) and in the oceans (2). The main reasons are chronic underfunding of global biodiversity conservation; the lack of incentives for global cooperation; and the failure to control habitat conversion, resource overexploitation, species invasions, and other drivers of biodiversity loss. Dinerstein et al. recently called for a global deal, complementing the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, for conserving half of the terrestrial realm for biodiversity by 2050 (3). Here, we explore how such a deal might be implemented to overcome the funding problem in biodiversity protection.

The forest transition: Towards a more comprehensive theoretical framework

Chen et al. argue against allowing corporations to participate formally in a Global Agreement of Biodiversity (GAB). Instead, they suggest an agreement in which only countries sign and enforce. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to indicate that current global agreements and financing are

The Economics of Tropical Forest Land Use Options

Investors are increasingly requiring assessments of environmental risks arising from climate change, natural resource scarcity and pollution. Improved environmental risk management also lowers the total cost of capital of firms, thus making them more attractive to investors. We illustrate this relationship by demonstrating how greater environmental risk may increase a firms after-tax cost of capital. However, better environmental risk management by firms requires a range of complementary policies. The rules governing the financial system should support investment decision-making that takes into account environmental sources of risk and opportunity. Central banks can advance this objective by establishing environmental risk management and reporting requirements and adjusting capital provisioning to account for underpriced environmental threats. There is also a need to develop international guidelines and common policy and legal frameworks to support and streamline such initiatives. Developing such a policy strategy is likely to produce a self-reinforcing gain to firms, investors and society.