Big ideas in development Banking on biodiversity a natural way out of poverty Big ideas in development Banking on biodiversity a natural way out of poverty Dilys Roe, Pavan Sukhdev, David Thomas and Robert Munroe Series editor Barbara Kiser Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity Big ideas in development series As a policy research organisation, the Others in this series: International Institute for Environment Fair Miles: Recharting the and Development has evolved key food miles map concepts, theories and ways of working in sustainable development Forthcoming in this series: since 1973. The big idea we explore • New green economy here is banking on biodiversity. This approach rests on the fact that • Community-based adaptation much rural poverty is concentrated in • Learning groups the world’s biodiversity hotspots. By supporting these communities’ • New business models long-term stewardship of land and sea, we can tackle two urgent global issues — extreme poverty and biodiversity loss — together. Contents 4 Introduction 16 Chapter 2 34 Chapter 4 Bankrupting the Bottom line: a Global wins: biosphere village-eye view breathing life into of biodiversity climate solutions 6 Chapter 1 Hotspots and 26 Chapter 3 44 Conclusion hunger: where New wealth of Biodiversity — biodiversity nations: biodiversity a development meets poverty and poor economies issue Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity Bankrupting the biosphere Introduction4 Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity It seethes deep under concrete and commodities based on natural tarmac, teems in drains, and makes resources may dry up, and unrest and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef a conflict erupt as the rural poor lose wonder of the world. Biodiversity is the their livelihoods — affecting trade, variety and abundance of all life, from international relations and tourism. genes to lemurs — the vast and We’re relatively lucky in the North: our intricate living fabric of our planet. access to technological fixes and That fabric is now frayed: as a barrage global market systems help us dodge of media reports tells us, abundance is some effects of this loss, at least for waning in many species and now. It’s a different story in the South. extinctions are 1000 times the We may travel through biodiversity ‘background’ rate. Yet this is a crisis ‘hotspots’, but millions of people live in that seems to have few tangible them, directly and completely impacts on our day-to-day lives. dependent on their forests, oceans So what if that richness unravels? and watercourses. Biodiversity is their natural safety net, and keeping it viable The answer is that biodiversity, in is one of the surest ways of helping all its extravagance, is also utterly them stay the right side of poverty. functional. It stocks our supermarkets, helps medicine keep Yet many — development professionals pace with disease, ensures included — fail to make this crucial ecosystems replenish the natural connection or see its implications. ‘goods and services’ we all rely on. This booklet explores what they’re So while iconic animals such as missing: how biodiversity supports tigers may be the visible ‘face’ of local livelihoods, contributes to biodiversity, the recent population economies of poor countries, helps crash in honeybees, a top pollinator, combat climate change. reminded us that life on the small and This is some of the most important microscopic scale is as vital. joined-up thinking we’ve ever had to More, the interconnectedness of do. Biodiversity loss impoverishes all global systems means that dwindling of us, but for the hundreds of millions biodiversity in Africa, Asia or Latin face to face with it, the consequences America has international social and can be unimaginably bleak. political implications. Supplies of Introduction5 Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity Hotspots and hunger: where biodiversity meets poverty To understand the overlaps between Untangling the web of life biodiversity and poverty, we first need to think a moment about what wealth ‘Biodiversity’ is a word that carries a lot means. Our economies in the North of weight. As we’ve seen, it’s no less are based on money, finance, funds than the sum total of Earth’s living — the stuff of New York’s Wall Street resources — a kind of shorthand for the or the City of London. mindboggling richness, in variability and quantity, of genes, species, Go South, and you enter a different ecosystems, and the communities of reality. Financial assets may be limited, ecosystems known as biomes. With but in many of the world’s poorest species alone numbering anything from nations, natural wealth abounds in 5 million to 30 million, that’s complex. reefs, mangroves, deserts, rainforests and savannahs. Millions of people in It’s largely the quality of variety that developing countries effectively ‘bank makes biodiversity so much more than on nature’ through fishing, subsistence ‘just nature’. An ecosystem rich in farming or small-scale forestry. biodiversity is more resilient and productive. Variety also means choice In this chapter we take a close — in medicines or foods or products to look at biodiversity, explore what sell. And it serves as effective risk we mean by poverty, and examine management. So if one crop is wiped the many direct and indirect out, there are others to fill its place; connections between them. when new diseases emerge, we have more chance of finding a cure. 6 Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity 2010: a big year for biodiversity Since 1959, the UN has devoted particular years to global issues ranging from peace to potatoes. It designated 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity to raise awareness about the issue’s importance and to galvanise action to curb biodiversity loss. The year was chosen to coincide with a global target set by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, an international treaty intended to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, as well as the equitable sharing of benefits arising from its use. That target — to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth — is also part of the globally agreed Millennium Development Goals that aim to alleviate extreme poverty. It has yet to be met. 7 Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity Life support: natural ‘services’ declines, ecosystems become less stable and less able to withstand Biodiversity Ecosystem services shocks and pressures, and their ‘level’ (some examples) delivery of key services declines. Ecosystems Recreation Some might argue that extinction is a Water regulation natural biological process — so why Carbon storage worry? The problem is that species are Species Food, fibre, fuelwood disappearing at an unprecedented Design inspiration rate, prompting some to call it the Pollination Earth’s ‘sixth mass extinction’. The usual suspects are driving it: changes Genes Medicine in land use such as forest clearances Disease resistance to make way for crops, the spread of Adaptive capacity monocultures, overexploitation of natural resources like fish stocks, and Source: TEEB. 2009. Integrating the ecological and pollution — from fertilisers, industrial economic dimensions in biodiversity and ecosystem service valuation. In TEEB Report D0. discharges and oil spills, for example. Beyond these immediate benefits, Ecosystems are dynamic systems and our survival depends on a range of so are pretty resilient, but only up to the biodiversity-driven ‘ecosystem ‘tipping point’. Beyond that they are services’: say, restructuring and unable to recover to their former state enriching soils, breaking down (see ‘Jellyfish and chips?’, opposite). pollutants, filtering freshwater (see Decades ago, American biologist Paul ‘Life support: natural “services”’, Ehrlich likened this to aircraft design. above). To generate these, a wide His ‘rivet hypothesis’ holds that you range of ecosystems, and an even can lose some rivets in a plane’s wing wider variety of species within each of and it will continue to fly, but you will them, are needed. When species die reach a point where the loss of just one out or are depleted, or genetic diversity more rivet becomes catastrophic. 1/3 of genetic resources for 40% of bird species & 42% 23% of plant species food and agriculture has been of amphibian species are are threatened** lost over 100 years* declining in population** *Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. **Global Biodiversity Outlook 3 (GBO3). http://gbo3.cbd.int/home.aspx. 8 Big ideas in development: Banking on biodiversity Jellyfish and chips? Many populations of fish will crash in a few decades if overfishing persists, according to researchers interviewed by the UK-based Sunday Times. Daniel Pauly, professor of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia in Canada, puts the current total wild catch at 150 million tonnes a year — some 60 million tonnes more than estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). The FAO itself, however, has estimated that over 70 per cent of fisheries are at or over the sustainable limit. Overfishing is an urgent problem, as a billion people, mostly in poorer countries, rely on fish as their main source of animal protein. For that to be sustainable, we need an overhaul of fishing practice. In the same article, University of York marine scientist Callum Roberts says that if we go on ‘fishing down the food web’ – moving to smaller and smaller species as we wipe out the larger ones – we will soon be left with just jellyfish and algae. This isn’t mere theory. A 2007 report by UK broadcasting body the BBC on a study by scientist Georgi Daskalov of the UK Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas) showed just such a ‘regime shift’ rolling out in Europe’s Black Sea.