A call for a 'Stern Review' on Biodiversity (Blog Action Day)

Background You've probably heard of the Stern Review, now a much-quoted 600-page study. It is a report written be the ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank stating that inaction towards climate change (i.e. doing business as usual) will cost the world economy 5% to 20% or more of the global domestic product (GDP). It has done a lot to push forward the idea that environmental management and climate protection also makes financial sense and to show that it is in fact not contradictory to economic growth. Through environmental protection new markets will even open up, especially in the energy sector. New technologies will emerge.

Focus and 'concentration': CO2, CO2, CO2 Now the problem is that much of the focus is concentrated on CO2 and ppm (parts per million) and how we can reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But the global problem goes much more than there - once CO2 emissions are stabilised it's not the end of the job. We might have stopped climate change but we should not forget the other things in life. Most importantly - biodiversity. To explain shortly, biodiversity means the varieties of life and living beings. It is essential to life. You could even go as far as saying it IS life. But the diversity of living creatures is decreasing day by day. If you've seen Planet Earth (BBC environmental series), it is really sad to think that younger children today can only see some of the creatures featured in the series on video because these animals will have gone extinct by the time the children grow up. Some of the creatures were even captured on film for the first time. It is sad to think that it might be the last time as well.

A call So I want to make a call for a Stern Review on biodiversity. Sometimes the only language people will understand is money. The Stern Review showed that inaction will cost up to 20 times as much or more than stern actions (excuse the pun :-) ) on climate change. This finally made some politicians and business people listen to the problems of climate change.

There is the IPCC Report from the UN that focuses on the scientific basis of climate change (which just recently won the Nobel Prize along with Al Gore, by the way), and the "financial" counterpart to this is the Stern Review.
There is also a huge UN Biodiversity Report called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, it is similar in scale as the IPCC report. But what is missing now is the "financial" counterpart for this one.

Quantifying biodiversity in monetary terms will be a huge challenge, especially because of the interrelations and connections between the different organisms. Who is to say what an ant, whale, horse, bee costs as an animal group? It is already hard to put a money value on an animal species in a small part of a small region of the world. Doing this on a global scale will be a challenging and daunting task, and whoever takes it up will get hard criticism and praise at the same time. But it will shed light on the biodiversity problems we are heading at. If a report of this kind doesn't work, maybe we need an Al Gore for biodiversity.

(This post is part of the Blog Action Day on the Environment)