TEEB report update urges governments to seal climate change package
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) initiative has published an update to its May 2008 report on the economic necessity of protecting the world's ecosystems. TEEB, a long-term, EU-funded study that combines the expertise of scientists, economists and policy specialists from around the world, pinpoints specific consequences if governments fail to seal an ambitious climate-change deal in Copenhagen this December. The purpose of the TEEB study is to evaluate the costs of biodiversity loss and the associated decline in ecosystem services worldwide, and to compare them with the costs of effective conservation and sustainable use. The initiative was launched by Germany and the European Commission in 2007, largely in response to a proposal by Group of Eight (G8)+5 Environment Ministers in Potsdam, Germany. TEEB is now hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and has the support of several national and international organisations. The interim report issued in May 2008 presented evidence for significant economic losses and human welfare impacts (valued at between EUR 1.4 and EUR 3.2 trillion per year) due to ongoing losses of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems. TEEB recommended that governments take the wider benefits of natural carbon storage into account when compiling a forest-carbon finance package for the Copenhagen summit. The report update includes an analysis of the coral reef emergency and its impact on both coastal defence and regional economies. TEEB scientists have found that while coral reefs can suffer irreversible damage at atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations of over 350 parts per million (ppm), concentrations are already well above this threshold and rising. Rising temperatures and ocean acidification are mainly responsible for this increase. According to TEEB project leader Pavan Sukhdev, reefs play a key role in coastal defence against storm surges (which are expected to rise) and other extreme-weather events. Stabilising CO2 levels at 450 ppm could well condemn this multi-billion-dollar ecosystem to extinction and take with it the livelihoods of 500 million people within a matter of decades. 'The ecosystem services from coral reefs, ranging from coastal defence to fish nurseries, are worth up to USD 170 billion [EUR 119 billion] annually,' explained Mr Sukhdev. 'An estimated half a billion people depend on them for livelihoods and more than a quarter of all marine fish species are dependent on coral reefs.' The data for the coral reef study was taken from a scientific statement on climate change and coral reefs published at a Royal Society Meeting, 'The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the Royal Society', in London, UK this past July. Mr Sukhdev, who also heads up the Green Economy initiative of the UN Environment Programme, added: 'The economic consequences are significant, but so are the social and humanitarian ones. It underlines that a simple cost-benefit analysis alone will fail to capture the ethical dimensions of international climate policy decisions now and in the coming years and decades - especially in respect to an ecosystem at a climatic tipping point.' The expert group looked at several climate-change issues in terms of policy and economic costs of inaction, specific policy opportunities, business risks and opportunities, as well as citizen and consumer ownership. 'Currently, governments are considering multi-billion dollar investments in carbon capture and storage at power stations,' commented Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP. 'Perhaps it is time to subject this to a full cost-benefit analysis to see whether the technological option matches nature's ability to capture and store carbon - a natural system that has been perfected over millions of years and with the multiple additional benefits for water supplies up to reversing the rate of biodiversity loss.' The European Commission's Director-General for Environment, Karl Falkenberg, said: 'These TEEB findings demonstrate that climate change and biodiversity loss must be tackled together. They lend further support to the EU's goal of achieving a concrete and ambitious agreement in Copenhagen that comprises both reductions in the world's greenhouse-gas emissions and the creation of global mechanisms to stop tropical deforestation. Quite simply, we will not manage to halt biodiversity loss if we do not mitigate climate change. And we will not be able to mitigate and adapt to climate change if we do not protect our valuable ecosystems and biodiversity.' The project leaders hope their findings will help to pave the way for a new 'green economy' in the 21st century, wherein natural or nature-based assets become part of mainstream economic and policy planning. The second phase of the study will be completed in 2010 and presented in Nagoya, Japan, at the 10th Conference of parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in October 2010.