World Bank calls for ecosystems to be valued

Yahoo News 28 Oct 10;

NAGOYA, Japan (AFP) – The World Bank on Thursday called for a radical shift in countries' economic models to include the values of forests, mangroves, coral reefs and other ecosystems.

India and Colombia will be among the first countries to take part in a five-year pilot programme with the World Bank to start the economic revolution.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick announced the programme on the sidelines of a UN biodiversity summit in the Japanese city of Nagoya.

"The natural wealth of nations should be a capital asset valued in combination with its financial capital, manufactured capital and human capital," Zoellick said.

"National accounts need to reflect the vital carbon storage services that forests provide and the coastal protection values that come from coral reefs and mangroves."

Zoellick said including the trillions of dollars worth of value from ecosystems in national accounts would help to protect the world's rapidly diminishing biodiversity.

He gave an example of coastal mangroves being cleared for shrimp farming.

Under the proposed economic model, the value that mangroves have in protecting coastal areas from flooding and the loss of fish would also be factored in.

People would then be in a better position to determine the economic consequences of clearing the mangroves, rather than look at the short-term benefit of shrimp farming.

The World Bank move comes after a UN-backed report was released at the Nagoya summit saying degradation of the world's ecosystems was costing the global economy between two and five trillion dollars a year.

That report raised alarm about the need for the global economy to put a value on ecosystems, and Zoellick said the World Bank wanted to work out a way to implement its recommendations.

"Through this new partnership, we plan to pilot ways to integrate ecosystem valuation into national accounts and then scale up what works to countries around the world," he said.

The UN summit is due to end on Friday with more than 190 countries aiming to agree on a 20-point plan to protect the world's ecosystems over the next decade.

Scientists say that ecosystem degradation is causing the world's plant and animal species to vanish at up to 1,000 times the natural rate, threatening human existence.

World Bank launches scheme to green govt accounts
* Bank partnership to help poorer nations save nature
* Tools to help place ecosystems into national accounts
* Will help better assess infrastructure projects -India
David Fogarty and Chisa Fujioka Reuters AlertNet 28 Oct 10;

The World Bank on Thursday launched a program to help nations put a value on nature just like GDP in a bid to stop the destruction of forests, wetlands and reefs that underpin businesses and economies.

The five-year pilot project backed by India, Mexico and other nations aims to embed nature into national accounts to draw in the full benefits of services such as coastal protection from mangroves or watersheds for rivers that feed cities and crops.

"We're here today to create something that no one has tried before: a global partnership that can fundamentally change the way governments value their ecosystems," World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters in the Japanese city of Nagoya.

More than 100 ministers are in Nagoya for a U.N. meeting that aims to seal a historic deal to set new 2020 targets to combat the rapid loss of plant and animal species from deforestation, pollution, over-hunting and climate change.

One of the targets before the ministers is to agree to include the values of biological diversity into national development plans, or possibly national accounts.

"For economic ministries in particular, it's important to have an accounting measure that they can use to evaluate not only the economic value but the natural wealth of nations," Zoellick told Reuters in an interview.

"It's not a silver bullet. It's a way of trying to help people understand better in economic terms the value of natural wealth."

While economists try to get a handle on the value of nature, scientists are struggling to get a full picture of the variety of wildlife species around the globe as climate change, exploitation and pollution threaten "mass extinctions," a series of studies published on Wednesday showed.

BENEFITS

Envoys at the Japan meeting, the product of years of negotiations, are trying to win agreement on a 20-point plan that aims to protect fish stocks, fight the loss and degradation of natural habitats and conserve larger land and marine areas.

Greater financing from rich nations, possibly through redirecting subsidies from the fossil fuel, fishing and other industries is key.

Envoys are also aiming to clinch by Friday a new pact that sets laws for the sharing of genetic resources between governments and companies, such as drug and agri-resources firms.

Poorer nations want greater controls to protect their environment and to potentially earn billions of dollars in extra revenue from the benefits of trees to fungi, insects to frogs.

Delegates and greens say the talks are making progress ahead of Friday's deadline but were still deadlocked on some issues and negotiations were expected to continue deep into the night.

"There is definitely a positive atmosphere," Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim told Reuters. "Everyone wants to reach a consensus here."

The World Bank program will give developing countries tools to help them measure the value and benefits of their ecosystems. India's Environment Secretary Vijai Sharma said at the launch the tools would make impact assessments more objective when looking at bids by miners or steelmakers to set up operations in India.

India recently scrapped London-listed Vedanta Resources' plans to mine bauxite and expand its alumina refinery in Orissa over environmental concerns, worrying investors.

The government has also expressed concerns over a $12 billion steel mill planned by South Korean firm Posco.

The Bank and other groups also launched a "save our species" initiative in Nagoya aimed at getting businesses to contribute to new conservation fund.

"It's nice that you may have a tiger as a logo but what does it do for your logo if the tiger goes extinct?" Zoellick told Reuters.

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

World Bank to lead economic push on nature protection
Richard Black BBC News 28 Oct 10;

The World Bank has launched a global partnership aimed at helping countries include the costs of destroying nature into their national accounts.

Ten nations will take part in the pilot phase, including India and Colombia.

The bank's president Robert Zoellick said environmental destruction happens partly because governments do not account for the value of nature.

The partnership was launched at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan.

"We know that human well-being depends on ecosystems and biodiversity," said Mr Zoellick.

"We also know they're degrading at an alarming rate.

"One of the causes is our failure to properly value ecosystems and all they do for us - and the solution therefore lies in taking full account of our ecosystem services when countries make policies."

Norway's Environment Minister Erik Solheim said re-valuing nature in this way would force business practices to change.

"We need to move from a situation where the benefits of ecosystem services are privatised whereas the coasts are socialised," he said.

"The full costs of negative impacts on ecosystems must be covered by those who receive a benefit from destroying it."
Trillion-dollar question

The new project aims to pick up conclusions of a recent UN-backed project on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), and help governments turn them into policy.

Teeb's headline conclusion was that degradation of the natural world is costing the global economy $2-5 trillion (£1.3-3.2bn) per year.

In the report, it also commented that the natural world's economic value, in terms of its provision of clean water, good-quality soil, pollination and other services, was largely neglected by policymakers because it was "invisible".

"The groundbreaking report... has helped define the importance of biodiversity in a new way," said UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.

"What's absolutely clear is that we need to bring about a real change in the way we value natural capital and ecosystem services and integrate them into the mainstream of our decision-making processes."

Ms Spelman and Mr Solheim both indicated their governments would support the new project's rollout.

Growing threat

In response to questions about whether businesses would resist this kind of natural capital accounting because it could affect their bottom lines, Ms Spelman suggested they would not object once they understood the reasoning behind it.

"Bees, for example, are worth about £440m to the UK economy," she said.

"When you think of having to substitute what nature provides for free, I think there won't be a backlash once people understand what ecosystem services provide."

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), added that a recent analysis showed that companies viewed biodiversity loss as a bigger threat than international terrorism.

The finding came originally from a World Economic Forum report, , which indicated businesses saw about an 8% likelihood that biodiversity loss would affect them - largely by damaging their reputation - while about 4% saw international terrorism as a threat.

"Some businesses are 'free riders' and take advantage of lax legislation to do things they won't be able to do in future," said Mr Steiner.

"But a lot of businesses are looking for ways to minimise their risk."

The draft agreement ministers are considering in the main negotiations here calls for "the values of biodiversity" to be integrated into countries' development and poverty reduction strategies.

But delegates are still arguing over whether to call for integration into national accounts.