The Price of Biodiversity

Mar 12, 2015 Bjørn Lomborg

According to three new studies, preserving biodiversity is not just a desirable goal; it also makes good financial sense, at least for some projects. World leaders, in choosing the targets that will guide the global development agenda for the next 15 years, should take note.

DHAKA – We humans do not only share the planet with a range of other species, including plants, animals, and even microbes; we also depend on them for our survival. Can we determine the economic value of protecting the natural world?

Some people will balk at the idea of putting a price tag on biodiversity, viewing its protection as an obvious imperative. But they would undoubtedly also agree that preventing human death and suffering, while providing food, water, and an education to all, is vital.

The reality is that there are simply not enough resources to do everything. Hard choices have to be made. Fortunately, economics can help us determine how to do the most good with the resources we have.

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Bjørn Lomborg

Writing for PS since 2005
181 Commentaries

Bjørn Lomborg, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School, is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. His books include The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, and, most recently, Prioritizing Development. In 2004, he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people for his research on the smartest ways to help the world.

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Eusebio Manuel Vestias pecurto vestias Mar 14, 2015

Long industrial exploitation forgon aesthetic and human touch is time to bring back with models of development based on nature if humans do not want to solve this problem mother nature will do their job in fact the climatic changes
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Ken Presting Mar 13, 2015

Bjorn Lomborg is one of the most deceptive (and therefore dangerous) characters in the climate change denial industry. His modus operandi is to apply "cost-benefit" analysis to ecological issues, generally trying to show that fossil fuel extraction and consumption is really good for all of us. His website states "climate change from 1900 to 2025 has mostly been a net benefit". But what appears to be detailed analysis is never more than gerrymandered statistics.

The article here is especially pernicious because Lomborg is presenting himself as an advocate for coral reef preservation. It is valuable to his funding stream that he and his "think tank" appear to be balanced advocate for rational policy, rather than anti-environmental extremists. But that is a superficial impression only.

Readers who click through to Lomborg's analysis of the UN development goals will see that sustainable energy development, fossil fuel replacement, and energy conservation are are relegated to the "least cost-effective" category. Lomborg is simply not in favor of measures to avoid climate change.

So where does that put his work in the community of those who truly do care about preserving coral reefs? Quite outside the community, and in fact, in active opposition. Real advocates of coral reef preservation identify climate change as a dire threat to coral:

http://www.teachoceanscience.net/teaching_resources/education_modules/coral_reefs_and_climate_change/how_does_climate_change_affect_coral_reefs/

http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Threats-to-Wildlife/Global-Warming/Effects-on-Wildlife-and-Habitat/Coral-Reefs.aspx

http://coralreef.noaa.gov/threats/climate/

The cynicism and dishonesty of Lomborg's project is palpable, but only to those who take the time to dig a little and realize there is far more to Bjorn than may appear in any one column. I just wish the editors of Project-Syndicate realize Lomborg is not a content provider - he is really a publicity agent, and should be paying for space like any other advertiser.
- Ken Presting Mar 17, 2015
  
  Dr. Weaver -
  
  Thanks for your comment. Were you with the MCRI? I read about your work.
  
  You are correct to identify my own remarks as ad hominem. You and I and Mr. Lomborg all agree that protecting coral reefs is important, while my purpose is to point out for the benefit of interested environmentalists that he is not a reliable ally.
  
  My own research specialization is statistical decision theory. You misread me if you conclude that I oppose cost-benefit analysis in general. Instead I am saying that Lomborg is misusing it.
  
  Readers who click though his links to the "studies" he cites will see that two of the cited authors are highly critical of the the third. There is no "consensus" to report. Lomborg only appears to be data-oriented to those who never look at what he claims is his data.
  
  You and I also agree that the present state of public debate over environmental policy is seriously degraded by shallow thinking and knee-jerk responses. My point is that Lomborg's rhetorical strategy is to think just one step ahead of those simple environmentalists. He admits that global warming is real and man-made. Lomborg thus appears to be the opposite of (eg) Senator Inhofe, who thinks that bringing a snowball into the Capitol makes a point against climate change.
  
  Lomborg is like the "Merchants of Doubt" who realized they didn't have win the argument against smoking as a cause of cancer. All they had to do was delay legislation against smoking. They earn their fees by protecting the business model of the industry they protect.
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- Dallas Weaver, Ph.D. Mar 16, 2015
  
  Ken,
  
  Wow! What an ad homen argument. There is no data or science presented showing where he is wrong or mistaken, just attacking him because he "appears to be balanced advocate for a rational policy" seems unnecessary.
  
  If you had solid scientific knowledge along with cost/benefit analyst understanding, you could have noted the impact of extra CO2 concentrations on the aragonite and calcite supersaturation in seawater and how that impacts corals and their growth rates. However, a rational discussion of this "cost" part of the fossil fuel equations would require understanding carbonate chemistry of seawater and a little bit of non-equilibrium thermodynamics along with ocean mass transport dynamics along with the entire energy for man resource/economic analysis. For his cost/benefit analysis, he already required some value analysis of coral reefs to come up with his cost/benefit numbers so you have most of the numbers required to show that a carbon tax of X amount would equal the negative externality of fossil fuel on coral reefs.
  
  However, the above would take work and scientific knowledge and I don't know how the numbers would come out. Considering the high benefit/cost number, I have a feeling he only included the low cost aspects of saving coral reefs like shutting down destructive commercial fishing and using aquaculture as a seafood supply and shutting down direct pollution (note killing coral reefs is a serial issue -- destructive fishing or pollution or CO2 will all destroy the reefs and fixing one doesn't solve the problem). The CO2 issue enters the equations on a 100 year time scale basis and then discount rate assumptions become critical.
  
  As a environmental scientist who actually solved real environmental problems, I have observed the environmental movement evolve from a science based movement into "belief system" that, like the anti-vaccine people, the anti-GMO people and anti-evolution nut cases, will automatically reject any facts that don't support their beliefs. This is often shown in the evolution of absolutism, where a problem is only viewed in isolation not as relative to other factors and alternatives. Your wholesale rejection of cost/benefit analysis as a tool for analyzing ecological issues exposes such one dimensional thinking.
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