by Agence France-Presse
The Silvereye of Australia. Photo courtesy MichelDignand via FlickrLONDON—A key U.N. report on biodiversity will recommend
massive economic changes like company fines to help save species and protect
the natural world, the Guardian reports.
The study, which
is due for publication in the summer, will argue that the economic case for
global action to protect biodiversity is even more powerful than the argument
for tackling climate change, according to the newspaper.
The report,
entitled “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB), was
launched by Brussels in 2007 with the support of the U.N. Environment Program,
after G8 and major emerging economies called for a global study.
If nature is not
factored into the global economic system, then the environment will become more
fragile and exposed to external shocks, placing human lives and the world
economy in jeopardy, it will argue.
The TEEB report
will also recommend that companies are fined and taxed for over-exploitation of
the natural world, with strict limits imposed on what they can take from the
environment, according to the paper.
Alongside
financial results, businesses and governments should also be asked to provide
accounts for their use of natural and human resources.
And communities
should be paid to preserve natural environments rather than deplete them.
The Guardian‘s
report, published on the U.N.‘s International Day for Biological Diversity,
added that the U.N. will also recommend reforming state subsidies for certain
industries, like energy, farming, fishing, and transport.
The TEEB study
will also warn that one-third of the world’s natural habitats have been damaged
by humans.
The total value
of “natural goods and services” like pollination, medicines, fertile
soil, clean air, and water will be around 10 and 100 times the cost of saving
the species and natural habitats which provide them.
“We need a
sea change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature,” said Indian
economist and report author Pavan Sukhdev, cited by the Guardian.
Sukhdev, head of the U.N. Environment Program’s green economy
initiative, also appealed for nature to be regarded “not as something to
be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived
within.”
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