How economic incentives for growers can benefit biological diversity

Biological diversity has constituted the focal point of environmental economics and public politics increasingly over recent years. Ecological and economic approaches guide the determination of accurate policies for a sustainable future and in drawing an efficient roadmap. Based on an extensive literature review, this study reveals both the importance and limitations of studies aimed at the economic value of biological diversity within the descriptive analysis and the method of group evaluation. In this study, it is shown directly that, studies which are based solely on biodiversity are seen to be insufficient. It is said that, the use values and non-use values of biodiversity to be determined as monetary and it is understood that, further policies can be developed on this subject. This study targeted an interpretation of the economic valuation concept by approaching key studies aimed at building bridges between a nation’s ecology and its economy. Revealing the value of the biological diversity both quantitatively and qualitatively, these studies reflect the difficulty in not only assessing the accurate evaluation regarding species and genetic differences, but also the ecological and economic substitution of possible biological diversity losses. Key words: Biological diversity, economic valuation, species diversity, ecosystem diversity, bio-prospecting value.

Biological diversity is an abstract, scientific concept and both evaluating its condition and, to great extent, justifying its conservation requires expert knowledge. Accordingly, regulating and managing biological diversity presupposes standardisation and methods for managing uncertainty. To be acted on, the concept must be promoted, passing, in this process, through various institutions, such as intergovernmental organisations and national administrations. This paper examines how the principle of biological diversity conservation is defined, focusing on the values of biological diversity and how this notion has ‘travelled the world’. The paper includes a study of how the principle of biological diversity was applied in a specific case of insect control in Sweden.

Journal Article The value of protection Get access The Preservation of Species: The Value of Biological Diversity. Norton B. G., ed. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1986. 305 pp. $29.50 (cloth) Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar BioScience, Volume 38, Issue 6, June 1988, Pages 424–425, https://doi.org/10.2307/1310931 Published: 01 June 1988

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Preservation of Species: The Value of Biological Diversity. Edited by Bryan G. NortonChristopher VecseyChristopher Vecsey Colgate University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 11, Number 1Spring 1987 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3984223 Journal History This article was published in the Environmental Review (1976-1989), which was continued by the Environmental History Review (1990-1995). © 1987 American Society for Environmental History. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a major step forward towards an integrated approach of biodiversity and conservation to sustainable development. The CBD mentions in its preamble the intrinsic value of biological diversity and the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components. However, there are still grave implementation deficits in practise on global, European, and national level. Therefore, the following research analyses the extend to which the different values mentioned in the preamble of the CBD are already included into a selection of European and international regulations related to biodiversity and to which extent a condensed amount of the same criteria is applied for comprehensive, transparent, and comparable evaluations. The study reveals that the established European and international biodiversity-related regulations do not sufficiently consider the different values of biodiversity, but also do not relate them to the same incomplete criteria. They still follow the traditional nature conservation approach, which has failed to halt the loss of biodiversity. Democratic participatory processes are needed, which integrate the different measures of Agenda 21 while applying the interdisciplinary evaluation framework of biodiversity for sustainable development.

As a philosopher who has written on the subject of endangered species policy, I am asked from time to time to join a panel discussion on “the value of biological diversity.” Consider a representative example: At the National Forum on Biodiversity, a 1986 conference organized by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences, I shared the platform with three resource economists and one ecologist. Everyone on the platform agreed that biological diversity has great value; the discussion focused on the question, can that value be quantified in dollar terms? I quickly perceived that I was in the middle of a polarized situation. The economists were there to demonstrate the efficacy of their methods for representing the value of wild species as dollars; the ecologist scoffed at these attempts as irrelevant at best and, at worst, as a symptom of moral depravity. Hovering in the background of discussions like this are celebrated examples such as that of the snaildarter and the Tellico Dam. In that case, the Supreme Court halted work on an almost-completed dam because it would have flooded the only known habitat of the snaildarter, a three-inch member of the perch family. The politically tortured case of the tiny snaildarter illustrates the dilemma environmentalists face in defending biological resources. Environmentalists initially opposed the Tennesee Valley Authority’s plans to dam one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Little Tennessee River because it would destroy white-water canoeing, flood natural ecological systems, and destroy anthropologically important Indian burial sites. Environmentalists made little headway, initially, as the bureaucratic processes ground forward and construction of the dam was begun. Then, in early 1976, in a dramatic development, biologists discovered a hitherto unknown species, the snaildarter, living in the waters upstream from the dam. Since the snaildarter spawned in shallow, fast-moving waters, the dam threatened to wipe out a distinctive form of life. Environmental economists, anxious to use their quantificational tools, saw the Tellico Dam as a case in which assigning a dollar value to a threatened species might tip the scales in an aggregation of costs and benefits of proposed projects.

The values of biological diversity: A perspective from China

The article attempts to analyze theoretically the socio-political phenomenon of «environmental terrorism». Complex of global environmental problems (pollution of air, water, soil, common planetary temperature increase, greenhouse effect, destruction of the ozone layer, large-scale floods, droughts, hurricanes, reduction of biological diversity, scarcity of natural resources, rapid demographic growth, cities crisis, environmental refugees, anthropogenic (man-made) garbage collapse, etc.) correlates with the radicalization of environmental views and the rhetoric of peaceful meetings and pickets of government institutions, corporations and international organizations are being replaced by firing from firearms, laying bombs, arson, namely terrorist acts. In today’s world conditions, in the fight for environmental issues solutions, for the right of every person to a clean environment and a fair distribution of resources, environmental views are transformed increasingly into extremism and radicalism, and thus, eco-activists cross the border and become eco-terrorists. The author of the article emphasizes that in the modern scientific space there is a significant lack of research material on the issues of environmental terrorism, which significantly complicates theoretical studying and the search for methodological tools for understanding this socio-political phenomenon. In his search for the keys to understanding of «environmental terrorism», the author turns to the evolution of the environmental movement (which has been developing along two main directions: the institutionalization of the environmental movement and the politicization of the environmental movement) and notes that at some stage of the evolutionary development of the ecological movement, divergences arise in the form of extremism and radicalism of environmental movements, which became the basis of environmental terrorism. Theoretical analysis of the activities of environmental terrorist organizations, including the Deep Green Resistance, the Huntingdon Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty), the Animal Liberation Front (Animal Liberation Front) and the Earth Liberation Front (Earth Liberation Front), also Earth Above All, Sea Shepherds and others, allows to assert that the increasing feelings of anxiety, helplessness and inevitability of ecological catastrophe on a planetary scale, total disappointment in political institutes and activities of international environmental organizations, «false news and rumors, pseudoscientific beliefs, turned into myths, mad populism, outdated and new group phobias, extremism and all this in hysterically transformational communities is turned into a theoretical basis and a trigger for violence» and becomes «nutritious» substance for the environmental terrorism. Key words: environmental movement, environmental problems, environmental policy, global environmental crisis, extremism and radicalism, environmental terrorism, the risks of today.

Worldwide climate change and loss of biodiversity are issues of global scope and importance that have recently become subjects of considerable public concern. Unlike classical public health issues and many environmental issues, their perceived threat lies in their potential to disrupt ecological functioning and stability rather than from any direct threat that may pose to human health. Over the last 5 years, the international scientific community and the general public have become aware of the implications that atmospheric warming might have for world climate patterns and the resulting changes in the persistence, location, and composition of ecosystems worldwide. At the same time, awareness of the magnitude of current and impending losses of the world's biological diversity has increased. Human activities are currently responsible for a species loss rate that is the most extreme in millions of years, and an alarmingly increasing rate of transformation and fragmentation of natural landscapes. We are just beginning to grasp the meaning of this loss in terms of opportunity costs to human society and the less quantifiable losses associated with simplification of natural ecosystems. In the case of both global warming and reduction of biological diversity, man is affecting nature in an unprecedented fashion, on a global scale, and with unpredictable and frequently irreversible results.

Worldwide climate change and loss of biodiversity are issues of global scope and importance that have recently become subjects of considerable public concern. Unlike classical public health issues and many environmental issues, their perceived threat lies in their potential to disrupt ecological functioning and stability rather than from any direct threat that may pose to human health. Over the last 5 years, the international scientific community and the general public have become aware of the implications that atmospheric warming might have for world climate patterns and the resulting changes in the persistence, location, and composition of ecosystems worldwide. At the same time, awareness of the magnitude of current and impending losses of the world's biological diversity has increased. Human activities are currently responsible for a species loss rate that is the most extreme in millions of years, and an alarmingly increasing rate of transformation and fragmentation of natural landscapes. We are just beginning to grasp the meaning of this loss in terms of opportunity costs to human society and the less quantifiable losses associated with simplification of natural ecosystems. In the case of both global warming and reduction of biological diversity, man is affecting nature in an unprecedented fashion, on a global scale, and with unpredictable and frequently irreversible results.

H abitat loss and fragmentation are among the most pervasive threats to the conservation of biological diversity (Wilcove et al. 1986, Wilcox and Murphy 1985). Habitat fragmentation often leads to the isolation of small populations, which have higher extinctionrates (e.g., Pimm et al. 1988). Ultimately, the processes of isolation and population extinction lead to a reduction in biological diversity. Concern for this loss has motivated conservation biologists to discuss the actions that are needed to increase the effective size of local populations. Predominant among these possible str,ltegies has been the recommendation that corridors be induded in conservation plans (Figure 1) to increase the connectivity of otherwise isolated patches (Meffe and Carroll1994). The indusion of corridors in reserve designs has become an importa nt conservation tactic for protecting biological diversity. This strategy was motivated by theoretical and empirical observations demonstrating that increased interchange of in-

The development of synergies between efforts to mitigate land degradation and biological diversity decline can enhance effectiveness, speed up implementation and avoid potential conflicts. Due to the variable nature of these processes and to the variable characteristics of the areas where they occur, there is no general rule linking land degradation and biological diversity decline. Thus, a geographically limited approach focusing on drivers of change may provide a more appropriate base upon which synergies can be built. This exercise is undertaken for the case of northern Mediterranean. Three related processes are discussed: land use change (in the form of agricultural abandonment and intensification, as well as urbanization), wildfires and overuse of freshwater resources. Agricultural abandonment stands out as it may or may not have adverse effects on land resources and it may promote either a reduction in biological diversity or a shift in community synthesis. Agricultural intensification affects adversely both biological diversity and land resources, though often through different mechanisms. Urbanization, by taking up space, wildfires, if they recur in short intervals or they are very extended spatially, and overuse of freshwater resources adversely affect both issues through common mechanisms. The fact that the various drivers may operate through different mechanisms and sometimes they do not even produce consistently positive or negative results calls for a site‐specific understanding of the mechanisms. As many of the processes generating these patterns are not reversible, e.g. intensification of agriculture or tourism growth, ways should be sought to reconcile them with conservation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Comparing composition and structure in old-growth and harvested (selection and diameter-limit cuts) northern hardwood stands in Quebec

The relevance of the topic of scientific research is associated with the biological characteristics of the studied grain crops in specific natural and climatic conditions. The purpose of this work was to identify the potential capabilities of various grain crops in terms of yield and quality indicators of grain in the central zone of the Orenburg region. Food security of the population in the overwhelming majority of countries is most often associated with the provision of grain. At present, despite the active introduction of modern agricultural equipment and innovative technologies into the world agricultural production, it is not possible to achieve a significant increase in gross grain harvests. The level of its production is still insufficient to fully meet the growing needs of the rapidly growing population. According to the expert assessment of domestic scientists, in the conditions of modern natural and anthropogenic changes in the environment, Russia can play an important role in stabilizing the world grain production, which has sufficiently high natural, intellectual and technical resources for this. Their effective and rational use on the basis of nature-like, ecologically-oriented agricultural technologies can make a significant contribution to increasing food stability. Meeting the needs of cultivated plants in the elements of mineral nutrition was reduced mainly to the mobilization of soil fertility, i.e. depletion of humus reserves. As a result, in most of the grain-sowing regions of Russia, and primarily in the regions of the steppe zone, its negative balance has developed. It is quite obvious that these circumstances are a serious obstacle to sustainable grain production and can lead to even greater degradation of disturbed soils, disruption of the biological balance in agroecosystems and a reduction in biological diversity.

Effects of non-human species irradiation after the Chernobyl NPP accident