Tagged: biodiversity

Creating a Market for Biodiversity Stewardship

by ESMinihan The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) has successfully negotiated a $116 million benefit sharing fund designed to facilitate biodiversity conservation efforts (see Feeding the future: agricultural biodiversity from CNN).  The species targeted for protection are not majestic wild cats or giant panda bears, but rather household staples such as potatoes, wheat, rice and maize that provide half of the worlds calorie requirements.  These efforts are an attempt to avoid potential disasters stemming...

Finding Environmental “Political Tender”: Expressing Forest Loss in Terms of Bank Crises and Babies in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

by ESMinihan Society is faced with a fundamental difficulty when prioritizing how, and if, to address issues related to environmental quality: determining the value of environmental “goods and services” such as biodiversity, habitat, and carbon sequestration.  Even when there is consensus amongst stakeholders that all these natural services are important, given there are no explicit markets for such goods revealing a price in common units, determining which issue should receive public attention (and funds) may depend on how the value...