What’s worth more: an elephant, or a blue whale? How about a forest? A square kilometer of old-growth forest may be home to a thousand distinct forms of life; if you bulldoze it, and plant a square kilometer of saplings somewhere else, is that equivalent? For many of us, these questions are absurd, utterly divorced from the complexity of nature and our environment. But for those who pull levers of power in the global economy – be it politicians, directors of international institutions, or titans of finance – costing the natural world has become a serious, urgent task.
Biodiversity and ecosystems are collapsing at breathtaking rates, and though these existential trends often garner less attention than the climate emergency, a biosphere in freefall is no less dire, threatening all forms of life, including our own. That the urgency of this crisis is now on the agenda of political leaders and institutions is thus, in some respects, reassuring. The problem is to do with who has put it there.
As understanding of the severe economic implications of biodiversity loss has grown, private finance and industry have quietly taken up the mantle of environmentalism, enthusiastically advocating ‘biodiversity offsetting’ and new financial products to fund conservation. Insurance giant Swiss Re has attempted to quantify what it calls ‘ecosystem services’ – that is, the benefits to the economy the environment provides, like clean water or breathable air. Royal Dutch Shell has made ‘nature-based solutions’ like carbon offsetting a centerpiece in their fervent greenwashing effort, while quantifying ‘natural capital’ has become so popular as to merit its own World Forum, global alliance, and annual summit. With little democratic scrutiny, the construction of nature as an ‘asset class’ is accelerating, disguised as a pragmatic route to overcoming governments’ supposed inability to adequately protect ecosystems and restore environmental health.
The ascent of this market-centric approach to nature is perhaps unsurprising in light of mainstream climate policy, where debate has long been dominated by carbon pricing, modelling ‘climate risks’ to the economy, and carbon markets
