We fail to recognise biodiversity's true value, and therefore make poor decisions

R Safford/BirdLife On average, c. 50% of the total economic value of a relatively intact natural habitat is lost following its drastic conversion to a more intense human use. Zoom In

Ignoring or undervaluing biodiversity undermines our own future. So long as we do not account for the true value of biodiversity, we will continue to destroy the resources on which we depend. Any short-term gains are massively outweighed by long-term losses.

Biodiversity provides for our needs

The Earth’s living and non-living natural resources provide us with the raw materials and processes that provide our food and shelter and that recycle our wastes. Nature’s huge bounty and powers of regeneration have encouraged us to take the benefits of our environment for granted, as if they were something infinite and eternal, too large to measure or monitor. Developed and developing countries alike continue to rely heavily on the consumption and transformation of natural resources to improve the lot of their citizens in the short term.

Our needs are beginning to threaten biodiversity

Now, with the world’s human population exceeding six billion and still growing rapidly, our own actions and their consequences are beginning to rival in magnitude the dominant processes of nature. Across the world, our ever-increasing consumption and transformation of natural resources are irreversibly reducing the diversity of genes and species on Earth, so altering ecosystem processes and patterns. Our waste products are accumulating faster than the planet can absorb them and this is setting in motion massive changes in our physical environment – climate change – even as we erode biodiversity, upon which we are ultimately dependent for our continuing existence.

We don't recognise biodiversity's immense value to humanity

So why do we ignore or undervalue biodiversity and the benefits that it provides, when we know that this attitude undermines our prospects and those of future generations? The answer is economically complex, but ultimately quite simple. It seems that we cannot calculate exact values for things that are neither bought nor sold, or whose benefits lie in the future. Indeed, a first attempt at valuing global biodiversity in monetary terms was only attempted very recently. The estimate – US$33 trillion per year – is of the same magnitude as the annual global gross national product (see box 1).

Unsustainable development results from our under-valuation of biodiversity

There is still a widespread lack of recognition, whether political, corporate or individual, of the high value of wild nature in the longer term. Government policies, markets and societal institutions often make matters worse, by subsidising and funding activities, such as intensive farming or wide-scale deforestation, that create private wealth in the short term, but accelerate the loss of natural systems (box 2).

In the long term, it makes sense to conserve remaining biodiversity

We do not manage our national economies so as to protect the wild nature that we instinctively value, and that is essential for generating economic wealth far into the future. Indeed, we often waste money by destroying natural ecosystems for short-term profits. This makes no sense, not just from a moral point of view, but from a conventional (far-sighted) economic perspective (box 3).

Boxes: case studies and scientific analyses

Download SOWB pp.52–53 (PDF, 291 KB) containing the following:

1. How much do we value wild nature?

2. In current global markets, oil palm plantations are valued more highly than ancient forest

3. The perverse economics of habitat conversion
On average, c. 50% of the total economic value of a relatively intact natural habitat is lost following its drastic conversion to a more intense human use, after currently unmarketed benefits are taken into account