Pavan Sukhdev: Put a value on nature!

116,351 views ・ 2011-12-14

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
I'm here to talk to you
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about the economic invisibility of nature.
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The bad news
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is that mother nature's back office isn't working yet,
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so those invoices don't get issued.
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But we need to do something about this problem.
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I began my life as a markets professional
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and continued to take an interest,
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but most of my recent effort
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has been looking at the value
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of what comes to human beings from nature,
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and which doesn't get priced by the markets.
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A project called TEEB was started in 2007,
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and it was launched by a group of environment ministers
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of the G8+5.
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And their basic inspiration
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was a stern review of Lord Stern.
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They asked themselves a question:
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If economics could make such a convincing case
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for early action on climate change,
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well why can't the same be done for conservation?
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Why can't an equivalent case be made
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for nature?
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And the answer is: Yeah, it can.
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But it's not that straightforward.
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Biodiversity, the living fabric of this planet, is not a gas.
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It exists in many layers,
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ecosystems, species and genes across many scales --
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international, national, local, community --
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and doing for nature
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what Lord Stern and his team did for nature is not that easy.
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And yet, we began.
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We began the project with an interim report,
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which quickly pulled together
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a lot of information that had been collected on the subject
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by many, many researchers.
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And amongst our compiled results
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was the startling revelation
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that, in fact, we were losing natural capital --
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the benefits that flow from nature to us.
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We were losing it at an extraordinary rate --
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in fact, of the order of two to four trillion dollars-worth
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of natural capital.
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This came out in 2008,
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which was, of course, around the time that the banking crisis had shown
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that we had lost financial capital
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of the order of two and a half trillion dollars.
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So this was comparable in size to that kind of loss.
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We then have gone on since
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to present for [the] international community,
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for governments,
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for local governments and for business
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and for people, for you and me,
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a whole slew of reports, which were presented at the U.N. last year,
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which address the economic invisibility of nature
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and describe what can be done to solve it.
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What is this about?
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A picture that you're familiar with --
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the Amazon rainforests.
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It's a massive store of carbon, it's an amazing store of biodiversity,
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but what people don't really know
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is this also is a rain factory.
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Because the northeastern trade winds,
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as they go over the Amazonas,
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effectively gather the water vapor.
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Something like 20 billion tons per day of water vapor
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is sucked up by the northeastern trade winds,
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and eventually precipitates in the form of rain
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across the La Plata Basin.
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This rainfall cycle, this rainfall factory,
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effectively feeds an agricultural economy
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of the order of 240 billion dollars-worth
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in Latin America.
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But the question arises: Okay, so how much
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do Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina
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and indeed the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil
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pay for that vital input to that economy
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to the state of Amazonas, which produces that rainfall?
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And the answer is zilch,
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exactly zero.
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That's the economic invisibility of nature.
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That can't keep going on,
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because economic incentives and disincentives are very powerful.
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Economics has become the currency of policy.
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And unless we address
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this invisibility,
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we are going to get the results that we are seeing,
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which is a gradual degradation and loss
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of this valuable natural asset.
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It's not just about the Amazonas, or indeed about rainforests.
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No matter what level you look at,
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whether it's at the ecosystem level or at the species level or at the genetic level,
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we see the same problem again and again.
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So rainfall cycle and water regulation by rainforests
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at an ecosystem level.
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At the species level,
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it's been estimated that insect-based pollination,
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bees pollinating fruit and so on,
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is something like 190 billion dollars-worth.
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That's something like eight percent
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of the total agricultural output globally.
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It completely passes below the radar screen.
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But when did a bee actually ever give you an invoice?
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Or for that matter, if you look at the genetic level,
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60 percent of medicines were prospected,
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were found first as molecules in a rainforest or a reef.
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Once again, most of that doesn't get paid.
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And that brings me to another aspect of this,
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which is, to whom should this get paid?
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That genetic material
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probably belonged, if it could belong to anyone,
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to a local community of poor people
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who parted with the knowledge that helped the researchers to find the molecule,
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which then became the medicine.
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They were the ones that didn't get paid.
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And if you look at the species level,
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you saw about fish.
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Today, the depletion of ocean fisheries is so significant
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that effectively it is effecting the ability of the poor,
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the artisanal fisher folk
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and those who fish for their own livelihoods,
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to feed their families.
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Something like a billion people depend on fish,
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the quantity of fish in the oceans.
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A billion people depend on fish
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for their main source for animal protein.
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And at this rate at which we are losing fish,
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it is a human problem of enormous dimensions,
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a health problem
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of a kind we haven't seen before.
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And finally, at the ecosystem level,
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whether it's flood prevention or drought control provided by the forests,
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or whether it is the ability of poor farmers
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to go out and gather leaf litter
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for their cattle and goats,
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or whether it's the ability of their wives
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to go and collect fuel wood from the forest,
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it is actually the poor
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who depend most on these ecosystem services.
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We did estimates in our study
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that for countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia,
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even though ecosystem services --
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these benefits that flow from nature to humanity for free --
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they're not very big in percentage terms of GDP --
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two, four, eight, 10, 15 percent --
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but in these countries, if we measure how much they're worth to the poor,
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the answers are more like
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45 percent, 75 percent, 90 percent.
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That's the difference.
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Because these are important benefits for the poor.
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And you can't really have a proper model for development
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if at the same time you're destroying or allowing
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the degradation of the very asset, the most important asset,
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which is your development asset,
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that is ecological infrastructure.
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How bad can things get?
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Well here a picture of something called the mean species abundance.
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It's basically a measure
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of how many tigers, toads, ticks or whatever on average
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of biomass of various species are around.
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The green represents the percentage.
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If you start green, it's like 80 to 100 percent.
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If it's yellow, it's 40 to 60 percent.
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And these are percentages versus the original state, so to speak,
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the pre-industrial era, 1750.
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Now I'm going to show you
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how business as usual will affect this.
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And just watch the change in colors
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in India, China, Europe,
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sub-Saharan Africa
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as we move on and consume global biomass
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at a rate which is actually not going to be able to sustain us.
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See that again.
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The only places that remain green -- and that's not good news --
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is, in fact, places like the Gobi Desert,
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like the tundra and like the Sahara.
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But that doesn't help because there were very few species
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and volume of biomass there in the first place.
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This is the challenge.
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The reason this is happening
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boils down, in my mind, to one basic problem,
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which is our inability to perceive the difference
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between public benefits
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and private profits.
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We tend to constantly ignore public wealth
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simply because it is in the common wealth,
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it's common goods.
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And here's an example from Thailand
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where we found that, because the value of a mangrove is not that much --
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it's about $600 over the life of nine years that this has been measured --
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compared to its value as a shrimp farm,
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which is more like $9,600,
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there has been a gradual trend to deplete the mangroves
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and convert them to shrimp farms.
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But of course, if you look at exactly what those profits are,
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almost 8,000 of those dollars
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are, in fact, subsidies.
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So you compare the two sides of the coin
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and you find that it's more like 1,200 to 600.
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That's not that hard.
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But on the other hand, if you start measuring,
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how much would it actually cost
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to restore the land of the shrimp farm
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back to productive use?
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Once salt deposition and chemical deposition
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has had its effects,
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that answer is more like $12,000 of cost.
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And if you see the benefits of the mangrove
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in terms of the storm protection and cyclone protection that you get
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and in terms of the fisheries, the fish nurseries,
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that provide fish for the poor,
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that answer is more like $11,000.
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So now look at the different lens.
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If you look at the lens of public wealth
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as against the lens of private profits,
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you get a completely different answer,
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which is clearly conservation makes more sense,
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and not destruction.
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So is this just a story from South Thailand?
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Sorry, this is a global story.
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And here's what the same calculation looks like,
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which was done recently -- well I say recently, over the last 10 years --
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by a group called TRUCOST.
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And they calculated for the top 3,000 corporations,
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what are the externalities?
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In other words, what are the costs of doing business as usual?
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This is not illegal stuff, this is basically business as usual,
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which causes climate-changing emissions, which have an economic cost.
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It causes pollutants being issued, which have an economic cost,
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health cost and so on.
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Use of freshwater.
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If you drill water to make coke near a village farm,
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that's not illegal, but yes, it costs the community.
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Can we stop this, and how?
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I think the first point to make is that we need to recognize natural capital.
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Basically the stuff of life is natural capital,
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and we need to recognize and build that into our systems.
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When we measure GDP
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as a measure of economic performance at the national level,
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we don't include our biggest asset at the country level.
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When we measure corporate performances,
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we don't include our impacts on nature
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and what our business costs society.
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That has to stop.
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In fact, this was what really inspired my interest in this phase.
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I began a project way back called the Green Accounting Project.
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That was in the early 2000s
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when India was going gung-ho about GDP growth
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as the means forward --
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looking at China with its stellar growths of eight, nine, 10 percent
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and wondering, why can we do the same?
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And a few friends of mine and I
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decided this doesn't make sense.
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This is going to create more cost to society and more losses.
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So we decided to do a massive set of calculations
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and started producing green accounts for India and its states.
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That's how my interests began
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and went to the TEEB project.
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Calculating this at the national level is one thing, and it has begun.
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And the World Bank has acknowledged this
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and they've started a project called WAVES --
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Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services.
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But calculating this at the next level,
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that means at the business sector level, is important.
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And actually we've done this with the TEEB project.
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We've done this for a very difficult case,
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which was for deforestation in China.
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This is important, because in China in 1997,
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the Yellow River actually went dry for nine months
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causing severe loss of agriculture output
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and pain and loss to society.
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Just a year later the Yangtze flooded,
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causing something like 5,500 deaths.
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So clearly there was a problem with deforestation.
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It was associated largely with the construction industry.
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And the Chinese government responded sensibly
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and placed a ban on felling.
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A retrospective on 40 years
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shows that if we had accounted for these costs --
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the cost of loss of topsoil,
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the cost of loss of waterways,
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the lost productivity, the loss to local communities
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as a result of all these factors,
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desertification and so on --
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those costs are almost twice as much
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as the market price of timber.
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So in fact, the price of timber in the Beijing marketplace
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ought to have been three-times what it was
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had it reflected the true pain and the costs
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to the society within China.
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Of course, after the event one can be wise.
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The way to do this is to do it on a company basis,
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to take leadership forward,
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and to do it for as many important sectors which have a cost,
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and to disclose these answers.
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Someone once asked me, "Who is better or worse,
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is it Unilever or is it P&G
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when it comes to their impact on rainforests in Indonesia?"
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And I couldn't answer because neither of these companies,
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good though they are and professional though they are,
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do not calculate or disclose their externalities.
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But if we look at companies like PUMA --
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Jochen Zeitz, their CEO and chairman,
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once challenged me at a function,
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saying that he's going to implement my project before I finish it.
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Well I think we kind of did it at the same time, but he's done it.
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He's basically worked the cost to PUMA.
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PUMA has 2.7 billion dollars of turnover,
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300 million dollars of profits,
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200 million dollars after tax,
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94 million dollars of externalities, cost to business.
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Now that's not a happy situation for them,
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but they have the confidence and the courage
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to come forward and say, "Here's what we are measuring.
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We are measuring it because we know
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that you cannot manage what you do not measure."
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That's an example, I think, for us to look at
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and for us to draw comfort from.
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If more companies did this,
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and if more sectors engaged this as sectors,
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you could have analysts, business analysts,
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and you could have people like us and consumers and NGOs
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actually look and compare the social performance of companies.
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Today we can't yet do that, but I think the path is laid out.
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This can be done.
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And I'm delighted that the Institute of Chartered Accountants in the U.K.
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has already set up a coalition to do this,
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an international coalition.
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The other favorite, if you like, solution for me
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is the creation of green carbon markets.
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And by the way, these are my favorites --
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externalities calculation and green carbon markets.
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TEEB has more than a dozen separate groups of solutions
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including protected area evaluation
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and payments for ecosystem services
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and eco-certification and you name it, but these are the favorites.
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What's green carbon?
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Today what we have is basically a brown carbon marketplace.
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It's about energy emissions.
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The European Union ETS is the main marketplace.
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It's not doing too well. We've over-issued.
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A bit like inflation: you over-issue currency,
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you get what you see, declining prices.
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But that's all about energy and industry.
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But what we're missing is also some other emissions
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like black carbon, that is soot.
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What we're also missing is blue carbon,
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which, by the way, is the largest store of carbon --
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more than 55 percent.
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Thankfully, the flux, in other words, the flow of emissions
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from the ocean to the atmosphere and vice versa,
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is more or less balanced.
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In fact, what's being absorbed
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is something like 25 percent of our emissions,
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which then leads to acidification
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or lower alkalinity in oceans.
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More of that in a minute.
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And finally, there's deforestation,
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and there's emission of methane
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from agriculture.
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Green carbon,
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which is the deforestation and agricultural emissions,
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and blue carbon
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together comprise 25 percent of our emissions.
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We have the means already in our hands,
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through a structure, through a mechanism, called REDD Plus --
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a scheme for the reduced emissions
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from deforestation and forest degradation.
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And already Norway has contributed a billion dollars each
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towards Indonesia and Brazil
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to implement this Red Plus scheme.
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So we actually have some movement forward.
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But the thing is to do a lot more of that.
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Will this solve the problem? Will economics solve everything?
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Well I'm afraid not.
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There is an area that is the oceans, coral reefs.
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As you can see,
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they cut across the entire globe
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all the way from Micronesia
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across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Madagascar
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and to the West of the Caribbean.
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These red dots, these red areas,
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basically provide the food and livelihood
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for more than half a billion people.
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So that's almost an eighth of society.
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And the sad thing is that, as these coral reefs are lost --
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and scientists tell us
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that any level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above 350 parts per million
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is too dangerous for the survival of these reefs --
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we are not only risking the extinction
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of the entire coral species, the warm water corals,
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we're not only risking a fourth of all fish species which are in the oceans,
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but we are risking the very lives and livelihoods
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of more than 500 million people
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who live in the developing world in poor countries.
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So in selecting targets of 450 parts per million
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and selecting two degrees at the climate negotiations,
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what we have done is we've made an ethical choice.
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We've actually kind of made an ethical choice in society
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to not have coral reefs.
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Well what I will say to you in parting
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is that we may have done that.
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Let's think about it and what it means,
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but please, let's not do more of that.
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Because mother nature only has that much
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in ecological infrastructure and that much natural capital.
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I don't think we can afford too much of such ethical choices.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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