ENDS Report
November 8, 2021
In a conversation with fellow economist Lord Stern at COP26, Sir Partha Dasgupta said that a ‘bold and imaginative’ response is needed to provide a financial incentive to protect globally valuable ecosystems.
“Rainforests are a global public good… and yet they are in national jurisdictions,” said Dasgupta, the author of a review of the economics of biodiversity commissioned by the Treasury. But the incentive that they have to protect such habitats is less than their value for the biosphere as a whole, posing an economic dilemma. There is a similar problem with the deep ocean, too: “nobody has to pay for it” when extracting resources such as fish or minerals, the professor said.
So a new body to protect global public goods, akin to the International Monetary Fund or World Bank but operating under the United Nations, should be established, he argued. They could charge for access, providing funding for the maintenance of ecosystem services.
A good deal of negotiation would be needed to set it up, of course – “but I think we should not fear that”.