Biodiversity market: how do you price a panda?
Nature and climate are totally inter-related – but they are treated as distinct in market terms. Aled Jones and Jack Kunkle unpick why, and why this has to change.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the total asset value of the UK’s ecosystems stood at an estimated £1.5trn in 2021, with the biggest contribution coming from costing up the health benefits they offered. However, according to the State of Nature Partnership’s 2023 report, the country is now one of the most nature-depleted on Earth, with nearly one in six species facing extinction. The two primary causes of this decline are farming and climate change. Is there a way to accelerate action and reduce our impact in our own backyard?
One option suggested is piggybacking nature action onto climate change action. Given the recent increase in net-zero targets and focus on achieving them, would incorporating nature risk alongside climate risk address this gap?
Problems in parallel
Biodiversity loss and climate change are interlinked: nature acts as both a sink and a source of carbon emissions, while climate change threatens ecosystems worldwide. However, they are generally in parallel. The UN has separate COPs for them: Montreal recently hosted the biodiversity COP15, while Dubai held the climate change COP28.
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