(Read this article in french)

The newly published report entitled ‘The Economics of Wilderness’ discusses the key economic dimensions, challenges and opportunities of diversifying resources for wilderness protection in Europe with a focus on payments for ecosystem services. The report, released by PAN Parks Foundation, in partnership with Synergiz and Integrated Sustainability Services, is released on 31 January 2012, in Brussels, at the European Parliament conference on the protection of wilderness.

PAN Parks Foundation published ‘The Economics of Wilderness’ to present good examples of how wilderness areas benefit various stakeholders via their various ecosystem services and to explore these values and ways how to translate them to conservation practitioners. Although the TEEB report (‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’) has successfully mainstreamed the concept of payments for ecosystem services to support sustainable land use, this has not yet penetrated into the practice of protected area management. Moreover, PAN Parks felt it particularly important to highlight why and how these concepts might be used in the context of wilderness protected areas in Europe – that is not in managed or cultural landscape protected areas. In principle wilderness areas follow non-intervention management practice; therefore they offer very limited direct use benefits to local communities.

Through case studies and literature review, the report looks into the opportunities of diversifying resources for wilderness protection and outlines the possible steps for securing both the ecological and financial viability of European wilderness areas.

« The Economics of Wilderness » highlights several key points:

• Wilderness areas provide various ecosystem benefits to various stakeholders and also imply forgone opportunities, also known as opportunity costs. Making the case for their effective protection and management thus implies efficient stakeholder engagement at all relevant scales, as well as the recognition of both benefits and costs. Yet, there is a general lack of understanding of the actual and potential economic benefits and costs associated with the specific management frameworks and rules of wilderness areas.
• A comprehensive, comparative assessment of the benefits and costs of uses and non-use of ecosystem services for wilderness areas and other types of protected areas in Europe is clearly warranted.
• Because of the methodological limitations and underlying principles of the economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services (cost-benefit approach), wilderness managers and promoters should put complementary emphasis on accounting for the costs of inaction, i.e. the costs of not protecting the ecological assets and ecosystem services underpinning wilderness values (cost-efficiency approach).
• The recent considerations of budget cuts in various European countries will put pressure on efforts to secure the ecological viability of wilderness areas. In addition to lobbying for sustainable state subsidies, wilderness promoters should seek new financing mechanisms so as to engage stakeholders in cost-effective wilderness conservation, restoration and expansion.
• The emergence of payments for ecosystem services seems highly appealing from this perspective. Combining strategies for mitigating loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services and remunerating supply of biodiversity restoration and ecosystem services opens the door to new forms of arbitrage with respect to land-use planning. Yet, this implies overcoming various challenges for designing effective PES mechanisms, especially if payments were to be stacked.

« We sincerely hope that our recent publication, ‘The Economics of Wilderness’, will result in further research and development of practical examples throughout Europe for financing wilderness protection through payments for ecosystem services. There are a few good examples but European governments and protected area managers must be more open to implementing the recommendations of the TEEB report especially in wilderness areas. We need to seize the opportunities otherwise existing wilderness areas will be in further danger!’ says Zoltan Kun, Executive Director of PAN Parks Foundation. »

To full report is available at: http://www.panparks.org/what-we-do/publications/the-economics-of-wilderness-overcoming-challenges-and-seizing-opportunities 

For more information, contact
Zoltan Kun, Executive Director, PAN Parks Foundation, tel. +36 70 380 1522, zkun@panparks.org
Edit Borza, Communications Manager, PAN Parks Foundation, eborza@panparks.org

For more on PAN Parks, visit www.panparks.org

Recommended citation:

Houdet, J., 2011. The Economics of Wilderness – Overcoming Challenges and Seizing Opportunities. PAN Parks Foundation – Integrated Sustainability Services – Synergiz, research report, p33

• Recalls the key events that took place after the April 20 explosion ;
• Explains the accounting and fiscal implications of BP’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill ;
• Explains the methodological challenges of quantifying environmental damages ;
• Exposes BP’s lack of transparency as regards to its calculation methods for its environmental liabilities;
• And underlines the need for more reliable environmental accounting and reporting: i.e. integrated monetary and non-monetary ecosystem data sets.

To download it: Firms, biodiversity and ecosystem services. What interactions and strategies? What accounting information systems? (Pdf 16Mo).

To download the PowerPoint Presentation (Pdf 3Mo).

Thesis committee:

M. Bruno DAVID, Research Director, UMR 5561, CNRS

M. Denis GASQUET, Managing Director, Veolia Propreté

Mme Nathalie FRASCARIA-LACOSTE, Professor, UMR 8079, AgroParisTech

M. Jacques RICHARD, Professor, UMR 7088, Université Paris-Dauphine – Co-chair

M. Michel TROMMETTER, Research Director, UMR 1215, INRA – PhD supervisor

M. Jacques WEBER, Research Director, CIRAD – Co-chair

Abstract :

Firms play major roles in biodiversity loss and are under increasing social pressures to mitigate their impacts. Within this context, our PhD thesis aims to propose new conceptual frameworks and tools so as to reconcile ecology and economy. In its first part, we analyze the strategic behaviors of firms with respect to their interactions with biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES). If the latter are often perceived as sources of legal constraints and additional costs, we underline the multiple advantages that firms may gain by assessing and managing their interdependencies with living systems. In the second part, we focus our attention on the innovations necessary to the onset of dynamics of co-viability between business and biodiversity, and, more precisely, on the development of new indicators. Two work streams are explored. Through various case studies, we first formalize an accounting framework for managing business interactions with BES, associating costs and revenues with BES data sets.

We then present the underlying principles and structural components of a Biodiversity Accountability Framework which would target stakeholders, towards standardized guidelines for reporting corporate performance regarding BES. Although the widespread use of these accounting tools would require further research, we emphasize that their institutionalization would be critical to setting up and managing new modes of regulation combining economic tools for mitigating BES loss and remunerating BES supply.

Through abundant case studies, Tim explains:
• What are the various ecoservice markets emerging in the USA ;
• How to integrate commodity and EcoCommerce objectives;
• What are the major barriers, challenges and opportunities to the widespread development of ecoservice markets;
• The various components of an effective ecoservice market : creating value in exchange, identifying marginal ecoservice values, secure property rights, trading mechanisms and elements;
• The different types of ecological indices in use or development;
• How farmers can develop financially-viable ecoservices portfolios.

EcoCommerce principles applied to urban ecosystems and other business activities, such as retailing or water services, could mean the emergence of a truly-green global economy; one which would be based on investing in ecosystem management and restoration.

To buy it : http://www.ecocommerce.us.com/

Biodiversity science in Québec: 2010 and beyond

November 30, 2010 – December 2, 2010

New Residence Hall, McGill University

3625 Avenue du Parc, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Program for November 30^th, 2010:

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, of the H. John Heinz III Centre for Science, Economics, and the Environment.

i)                     overview of the findings of the Council of Canadian Academies’ Expert Panel that evaluated the State and Trends of Biodiversity Science in Canada

ii)                   perspectives on the events that took place at the Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya (Japan) this October.

Dr. Joël Houdet, consultant at Accountants@Law & President of Synergiz,

iii)                  Integration of biodiversity in corporate strategies: from biodiversity self-assessments to environmental accounting

John Finisdore from the World Resources Institute

iv)                  The ecosystem services review methodology and the WRI business & ecosystem leadership group

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Website: http://qcbs.ca/research/qcbs-annual-conference/

CONTACT

Philippe Auzel, Coordinator

Email: philippe.auzel@mcgill.ca

Tel: 514-398-8719, Fax: 514-398-5069

ABOUT THE QUEBEC CENTRE FOR BIODIVERSITY SCIENCE

The Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science is a research network comprising more than 350 researchers and students: Bishop’s University, Concordia University, McGill University, Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval, Université de Sherbrooke, the Montréal Botanical Garden, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

The QCBS mission is

• To foster and promote a world-class research and training program in biodiversity science;
• To facilitate scientific cooperation and learning among a cross-disciplinary group of researchers; and
• To assume a lead role on biodiversity related issues and to contribute to the academic and public debate on biodiversity loss.

After one year during which all glances were directed to climatic change issues, with its paroxysm at Copenhagen’s conference last December, 2010 will be the year dedicated to biodiversity. Attentions will this time be focused on the tools needed to stop its global homogenization.

Eager to respond to the concerns of their stakeholders in this context, many actors from the private sector continue their reflections and works regarding the integration of biodiversity into their corporate strategies.

This is notably the case of Veolia Environnement which worked, in partnership with Orée, on identifying, from an accounting perspective, the links between biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) and the activities of a wastewater treatment plant in Berlin (BWB[1]). This case study[2] falls within Phase 2 of the Working Group “Integrating biodiversity into corporate strategies” which aims to develop a management accounting framework for BES.

Building upon the paper by Houdet et al. (2009)[3] which deals with accounting for biodiversity and ecosystem services for both management and reporting purposes, the case study sought to quantify the accounting links between BES and the costs and revenues of Wassmannsdorf’s wastewater treatment plant. To that end, the authors identified (A) material flows of biodiversity used by the company (purchased or freely appropriated) and (b) the ecosystem (dis-)services which influence its activities and which are influenced by the latter.

The study shows that, to satisfy contractual performance criteria, BWB management is currently mainly involved with:

1. the management of ecosystem services within wastewater treatment plants, that of water purification (40% of total operating costs at Wassmannsdorf’s plant) and sludge digestion (60% of total operating costs are related to sludge management, a significant share of which involves the digestion process) by microorganisms, and
2. the quantity, content and delivery timing of wastewater entering WWTPs, which are influenced by various ecosystem (dis-)services within urban areas upstream.

So as to promote the diversity, variability and heterogeneity of living systems throughout the ecosystems with which the company interacts (Houdet et al., 2009)[4], the authors then explore complementary approaches so that BWB may systematically take biodiversity into account within its corporate strategies. In particular, they discuss:

1. the promotion of ecological engineering techniques[5] to treat wastewater ;
2. integrating green spaces managed by BWB into local ecological networks by managing them to reach BES targets negotiated with stakeholders ;
3. including complementary contractual BES performance criteria into BWB’s contractual terms.

[1]Berliner Wasser Betriebe is a company operating in Berlin (public – private partnership). Veolia Environnement owns 49,9% of its shares.

[2] Accounting for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services From a Management Accounting Perspective, Gaël Gonzalez and Joël Houdet, Orée, 2009 – http://www.oree.org/docs/case-study-veolia-oree.pdf

[3] Joël Houdet, Charlotte Pavageau, Michel Trommetter, Jacques Weber, 2009. Accounting for Changes in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services From a Business Perspective – Preliminary Guidelines towards a Biodiversity Accountability Framework. Novembre 2009, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, Cahier N°2009-44 – http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/43/44/50/PDF/2009-44.pdf

[4] Houdet, J., Trommetter, M., Weber, J., 2009b. Changing business perceptions regarding biodiversity: from impact mitigation towards new strategies and practices. Cahier no 2009-29. Ecole Polytechnique, Department of Economics. 28p. – http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00412875/en/

[5] See the work undertaken by GAIE – Groupe d’application de l’ingénierie des ecosystems – created in 2006 in Paris ; http://www.ingenierie-ecologique.org/ .

The Congress will be held on 28-30 May 2010 in Bonn, Germany, preceding the UN climate talks in Bonn, which are scheduled for 31 May – 11 June 2010.

This first edition aims at sharing the latest scientific findings, effective approaches and state-of-the-art programs on climate change adaptation and resilience-building in cities and urbanized areas.

Partners will share knowledge and exchange experiences on a variety of themes :

• Urban Risk Assessment – Methods and Tools
• Socio-Economic and Institutional Dimensions
• Strategy, Policy Integration and Mainstreaming
• Urban Adaptation Planning and Practice
• Costs and Financing of Urban Climate Change Adaptation
• Technologies for Adaptation of Settlements and Infrastructure

(See the detailed program here : http://resilient-cities.iclei.org/bonn2010/program/)

Case examples of local adaptation practice on all six themes will illustrate approaches and experiences.

An electronic forum dedicated to CICES will remain open until February 2010: www.cices.eu

This work may have significant implications for the management of ecosystem services within urban ecosystems, notably in terms of town planning and procurement / subsidy policies.

Situated in the Rhine Valley/southern LowerRhine bight, Bonn is home to 314 000 people and covers 141 square kilometers. The city has a long history of settlement. The dense population and traditional urban character of the whole region, as well as the fact that Bonn is home to many young families, creates a permanent need for expansion and new individual housings. In Germany and Europe, the conflict in balancing urban development needs with those of landscape conservation is subject to a rather sophisticated legal framework requiring approval of projects and compensatory measures if necessary. In Bonn, some 51% of urban space is under some form of protection, namely 28% in landscape protection and 23% in nature preserves. Besides spatial planning, raising awareness and promoting agro-biodiversity are main targets set by decision makers. For instance, a new project involves finding, safeguarding, promoting and publicizing old regional fruit and vegetable varieties, in the interest of preserving species and varietal diversity among crops. Furthermore, Bonn is aware of the inter-linkages between biodiversity and other fields of sustainability, namely climate change, though it remains unclear how they might make converge the two agendas. Despite the efforts made in terms of ecological continuity and species protection, one may question the place given to biodiversity in the evolution of city. Is biodiversity essentially limited to a spatial planning question: i.e. within green open spaces or nature conservation areas? The answer is clearly not! For a start, Bonn’s citizens and decision makers might want to have a look at the following selection of issues:

• Food consumption patterns, both in terms of the ecological impacts of food production processes and the ecological health of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems that provide them ; with direct links with other ecological issues such as climate change (e.g. transports) and the ecological integrity of water bodies (e.g. agricultural chemicals).
• Biodiversity and health: How can we integrate biodiversity in the daily activities, living spaces and medicine of humans? Too often we forget that without the millions of bacteria in our intestines (and our epidermal or mouth “flora”) we would not be able to survive. As living organisms, humans are an integral part of the diversity, variability and complexity of living systems!

Bibliography:

• Local Government for Sustainability
• Proceedings of the International Conference « Biodiversity : Science and Governance » in 2005 in Paris
• Convention on Biological Diversity’s website on “Urban Biodiversity & Design”
• Convention on Biological Diversity’s Bonn case study