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Tuesday 17 April 2012

IPBES Meeting News: 16 April

Follow the progress at the ongoing IPBES meeting. The "highlight" of today was the strong disagreement on the "ES" in IPBES. Several countries question the term "Ecosystem Services" since they regard this as connected to monetary valuation of nature which in their views opens for market mechanisms and associated distortion and exploitation. Others claims the opposite, that without of economic valuation exploitation will continue to erode biodiversity.

For more on the 16 April Monday highlights see IISD Reporting Service!

Bege Jonsson

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ecosystem services valuations do not require monetary values. However,whatever the form of these values, the valuation, and consequent conservation, of ecosystem services, does not guarantee conservation of regional biodiversity.

I have argued that: "There is some evidence that the collective contributions of localities conserved based on ecosystem services, even while conserving local elements of biodiversity, provide only limited representation of broader regional biodiversity. A Papua New Guinea study showed that the country’s extensive network of Wildlife Management Units, assigned protection for traditional hunting, subsistence agriculture, and other ecosystem services, performed poorly in representing the country’s overall biodiversity....." see
Faith, D.P. (2011) Higher-level targets for ecosystem services and biodiversity should focus on regional capacity for effective trade-offs. Diversity 3,1-7; doi:10.3390/d3010001 http://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/3/1/1/pdf

see also
http://australianmuseum.net.au/Planet-Under-Pressure-ecosystem-services-imply-tipping-points-for-biodiversity-conservation

Bege Jonsson said...

Good point and I agree. It is not the final fix to the biodiversity issue to set a monetary or for that a human-based non-monetary value. One also has to recognize the intrinsic value. However, I would still think that the notion that we are actually ignoring some very concrete values (monetary or non-monetary) is one of the reasons for our failure to protect biodiversity.