Biodiversity: What's Worth Saving?

In an op-ed published on Huffington Post Bjorn Lomborg discusses the findings from our research papers on biodiversity targets for the post-2015 development agenda.  The op-ed begs the question “What’s worth saving?” How can we put a price tag on Biodiversity? 

Biodiversity - the range of species we share our planet with - is important, but can we put a value on it? And can we estimate the benefits and costs of conservation? Professor Anil Markandya and two other economists (Luke Brander and Alistair McVittie) have written three new, economics papers for my think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus. They find that not only can we estimate the costs and benefits for some projects but also that conservation can be a great investment.

A target to preventing the loss of coral reefs will for each dollar spent deliver at least $24 of environmental benefits. Likewise, reducing the current loss of forests by half would likely do about $10 of good for each dollar spent. They also find that increasing protected areas is likely to be a poor target."

Click here to read the entire article on Huffington Post.