UN warns biodiversity loss poses greater business risk than climate change?

O

Ottawa Mike

New member
"The two year study from the UN Environment Programmme, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), will show that the annual economic impact of biodiversity loss stands at between $2 trillion (£1.3 trillion) and $4.5 trillion, equating to up to 7.5 per cent of global gross domestic product." http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2266348/un-warns-biodiversity-loss

"It argues that contamination of water supplies, the loss of productive land through soil erosion and drought, and disruption to supply chains caused by deforestation and overfishing all result in multibillion-dollar costs that are largely ignored by the current global economic system."

Can anyone explain what exactly these costs are, how they are being paid and by whom? How can a cost "be ignored"?
From the answers so far, I get the feeling we are going to have to wait and read the report. It's just that "costs" of $2-4.5 TRILLION DOLLARS per year is quite an extrodinary number.

Is the real problem here the fact that current environmental regulations are not sufficient (I would probably agree) or is just simple human expansion and growth?
 
To get an explanation of what those costs are, read the UN report instead of a news story about the report.
Costs get ignored by an economic system when there is no mechanism whereby those costs can change the behavior of the economic system. Cigarette smoking has incurred vast healthcare costs in the world, none of those costs affected the behavior of tobacco producers and distributors until substantial legal changes were made, none of those costs affected public behavior until substantial propaganda efforts were made.

The ecological costs of King Cotton depleting the soil were ignored until they ruined the American South's economy, The ecological costs of overworking the American Midwestern soil were ignored until the Dust Bowl era.

The history of the human race is that ecological costs get ignored until they bite us in the backside.

Edit: Jim Z's translation seems to ignore the fact that we've already found out that corporations need laws and regulations in order to work properly, indeed they need them in order to get set up at all. There are a number of legal systems other than socialism, thank goodness.

Edit again : The "tragedy of the commons" is that resources that are owned by everybody invite overuse by everybody, causing loss to all. The standard example is a common green, where everyone sends their sheep to graze to conserve their own crops, resulting in the common green turning into barren land. Mr. Z apparently can't even recognize a valid argument against socialism.
 
No, no one can explain the costs, you are to take it on the authority of the objective UN that the costs are real, devastating and that the answer is socialism.

Whichever candidate says we cut off relations with the UN and kick it out of the US gets my vote.
 
I don't know how you get from the report that the biodiversity is a "greater" risk than climate change other than an utterly thoughtless regurgitation of an inaccurate headline.

The actual report cites climate change as one of the key drivers of loss of biodiversity.

"The direct drivers of biodiversity loss include habitat loss and degradation, climate change, pollution, over-exploitation and the spread of invasive species."

Moreover, steps to mitigate global warming will complement steps to mitigate biodiversity loss.

What this report is pointing to economically, is the "tragedy of the commons" effects of economic decisions when environmental damage is kept external of market decisions. For Brazil or a landowner in Brazil it is profitable to deforest a section of the rain forest and use the land as pasture. But the whole world suffers from that decision. So the tough economic and political question is how to incent the land owner to consider damage to the world when making decisions. Without a marketplace system it will require government mandates which are typically not healthy for the market. But doing nothing only allows the problems to grow.
 
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