People in rich nations’ excessive consumption has been driving global biodiversity loss, and they should pay compensation via loss and damage funds to countries whose natural habitats are being exploited, a group of researchers have argued.
The concept of ‘loss and damage’ is a familiar one in international climate change negotiations and refers to the disproportionate responsibility that rich countries have in emitting greenhouse gases and thus causing climate change across the world.
New funding arrangements were established at the 2022 United Nations conference on climate change, COP27, whereby rich countries are expected to contribute to a fund which will help address loss and damage linked to climate change in the Global South.
Two of the key drivers of biodiversity decline are habitat loss and degradation in terrestrial ecosystems, and over-exploitation in aquatic ecosystems.
These drivers, experts from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCD) highlighted in an article published in Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, are to a large part driven by consumption in rich countries.
“Global biodiversity loss has been disproportionately driven by consumption of people in rich nations. The concept of ‘loss and damage’ … should be considered for the effects of biodiversity loss in countries of the Global South,” the researchers wrote.
The article pointed to analysis from the UK government’s official biodiversity statistics that shows that UK consumption of crop, cattle-related, and timber commodities in 2018 was associated with a loss of the equivalent of 43,000 football fields of tropical deforestation.
Industrial fishing by EU vessels in West Africa to satisfy demand from EU consumers has also been linked with overfishing in this region.
An argument against the polluter pays principle for biodiversity loss in the Global South is that these countries have willingly entered into commercial agreements with rich countries and therefore the same principle with compensation for climate change does not apply.
The article, however, contended that there is often a power imbalance between the country in the Global South and the rich counterpart, and often existing relationships are rooted in a colonial past and neocolonial financial dependency.
Furthermore, as climate change is a key driver of biodiversity loss, such nature degradation can be considered as one of the types of loss and damage from climate change that should be eligible for this type of funding.
Biodiversity loss, the article argued, can be considered as a type of non-economic loss and damage, but natural habitat loss, such as the depletion of fish stocks in West Africa, can be a huge economic disadvantage to communities that rely on the ocean to survive, thus making it an economic loss as well.
The experts argued that damages associated with biodiversity loss should be compensated as part of the climate change loss and damage framework mechanism once it is set up.
Furthermore, the concept of the ‘consumer pays’ principle, lesser known that ‘polluter pays’ principle, should be introduced, in order to highlight the link between rampant consumerism in developed countries and biodiversity loss.
By Rebecca Gualandi – rebecca@carbon-pulse.com
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