e360 digest

20 Jan 2012: Value of Conserving Habitats
Could be Worth $500B to World’s Poor

A new study says that compensating the world’s poorest communities for helping conserve the planet’s most vital habitats would help solve two major challenges: biodiversity loss and poverty. In fact, if global

Interview: Putting a Price
On the Value of Nature

Pavan Sukhdev Putting a Price on Value of Nature

In an interview with Yale e360, Indian banker Pavan Sukhdev discusses the ways natural ecosystems benefit people and why policymakers and businesses must rethink how they assess environmental costs and benefits.
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leaders were to put an economic value on the preservation of the world’s biodiversity hotspots — including such benefits as providing food and water and absorbing carbon emissions — it could be worth more than $500 billion annually for 330 million of the world’s poorest people. Since the people who live near these resources typically don’t have the means to protect them, the urgency for such economic mechanisms becomes increasingly critical, according to the study, published in the journal BioScience. “Developed and developing economies cannot continue to ask the world’s poor to shoulder the burden of protecting these globally important ecosystem services for the world’s benefit,” said Will Turner, vice president of Conservation International and lead author of the study. An example of such a scheme is the UN-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which provides incentives to developing nations to prevent large-scale deforestation.

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The Warriors of Qiugang, a Yale Environment 360 video that chronicles the story of a Chinese village’s fight against a polluting chemical plant, was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Watch the video.

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As temperatures rise and water supplies dry up, tribes in East Africa increasingly are coming into conflict. A Yale Environment 360 video reports on a phenomenon that could become more common: how worsening drought will pit groups — and nations — against one another. Watch the video.

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