Biodiversity and Economic Development: The Policy Problem

What significance does biodiversity have for humanity? How much does the loss of biodiversity matter? What resources should we be committing to its conservation? One reason why these are such difficult questions to answer lies in the enormous uncertainty associated with the loss of biodiversity. Extraordinary little is known about the diversity of species on the planet. Even less is known about the rate at which diversity is being lost, and the implications this has for the resilience of the biosphere. Estimates of the total number of species on the planet range from five to one hundred million, of which less than one and a half million have even been described [Wilson, 1988], and less than half a million analysed for their economically interesting properties [Miller et al., 1985]. Little, too, is known about the role of biodiversity in the functioning of ecosystems under current conditions, and in assuring their ability to continue to function under different conditions. Moreover, there are very few economic indicators of the relative scarcity of individual organisms, and almost no reliable indicators of the value of the mix of organisms. Indeed, economists have hardly begun to grapple with the problem of the valuation of biodiversity, although they have long recognised that the market prices of species are poor indicators of their wider value to humanity [cf Brown, 1990].