Environment Disadvantage -4wkj-ndi

Food Security

Marine ecosystem collapse is a serious threat to global food security

Worm 6 (Boris Worm et al. , Dr. Boris Worm is a Marine Research Ecologist and Associate Professor at Dalhousie University, Canada.[1] He has made scientific contributions to the fields of marine ecology and fisheries conservation. Worm was a postdoctoral fellow under the late Ransom Myers[2] and now leads his own lab at Dalhousie. The Worm Lab includes students and postdoctoral fellows engaged in the study of marine biodiversity, its causes, consequences of change, and conservation. “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Servies, 2006 ” http://kfrserver.natur.cuni.cz/gztu/pdf/WORM_ES_ocean.pdf) Positive relationships between diversity and ecosystem functions and services were found using experimental (Fig. 1) and correlative approaches along trajectories of diversity loss (Figs. 2 and 3) and recovery (Fig. 4). Our data highlight the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale (Fig. 3A). This trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid – 21st century (based on the extrapolation of regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048) Our findings further suggest that the elimination of locally adapted populations and species not only impairs the ability of marine ecosystems to feed a growing human population but also sabotages their stability and recovery potential in a rapidly changing marine environment. We recognize limitations in each of our data sources, particularly the inherent problem of inferring causality from c orrelation in the largerscale studies. The strength of these results rests on the consistent agreement of theory, experiments, and observations across widely different scales and ecosystems. Our analysis may provide a wider context for the interpretation of local biodiversity experiments that produced diverging and controversial outcomes ( 1 , 3 , 24 ). It suggests that very general patterns emerge on progressively larger scales. High-diversity systems consistently provided more services with less variability, which has economic and policy implications. First, there is no dichotomy between biodiversity conservation and long-term economic development; they must be viewed as interdependent societal goals. Second, there was no evidence for redundancy at high levels of diversity; the improvement of services was continuous on a log-linear scale (Fig. 3). Third, the buffering impact of species diversity on the resistance and recovery of ecosystem services generates insurance value that must be incorporated into future economic valuations and management decisions. By restoring marine biodiversity through sustainable fisheries management, pollution control, maintenance of essential habitats, and the creation of marine reserves, we can invest in the productivity and reliability of the goods and services that the ocean provides to humanity. Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations.

The food crisis will exponentially increase if no action is taken

Annan 11 (Kofi A. Annan was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, serving two terms from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006 and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff. In 2001 Kofi Annan and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace with the citation praising his leadership for “bringing new life to the organisation”, “Food Security is a Global Challenge”, November 2011 http://kofiannanfoundation.org/newsroom/speeches/2011/11/food-security-global-challenge) Only last week [in 2011] the UN marked the world’s population reaching seven billion. And it was just 13 years earlier, in Sarajevo, where the world celebrated the birth of the six billionth child. This growth has been driven by great advances in healthcare, higher levels of prosperity, and longer life expectancy. But these achievements are marred by the knowledge that our successes go hand in hand with a shameful failure. For almost one in seven people on our planet will today not have enough to eat. Addressing this failure, urgent as it is, will be made much harder by climate change. For rising temperatures and more frequent severe weather will have a disastrous impact on the availability and productivity of agricultural land. Indeed they already are. It is these two inter-linked global challenges- food security in an era of climate change, and their impact on our ambitions for a fairer and more secure world that I want to talk about today. I will focus in particular on the challenges and opportunities that currently exist in Africa. Ladies and gentlemen, we live at a time of great contrasts. New technologies and the benefits of globalisation have created greater prosperity and more opportunity than ever before. But this progress has not been shared evenly. Hundreds of millions of our fellow citizens continue to live in poverty, and without dignity. At the heart of this global inequality lies food and nutrition insecurity. The lack of food security for almost one billion people is an unconscionable moral failing. But it is also a major brake on overall socio-economic development. It affects everything from the health of an unborn child to economic growth. But despite the increase in our knowledge and capabilities, instead of seeing a reduction in the number of people going hungry, we are seeing an increase. According to the World Bank, rapidly rising food prices during 2010 and 2011 pushed an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty. We also know that we will have to find food to feed many more mouths in the coming decades. Recent projections warn that the number of people may not stabilize at nine billion, as was forecast only two [four] years ago, but could surpass 10 billion by the end of the century. At the same time, greater prosperity in developing countries will see three billion people moving up the food chain with a growing appetite for meat and dairy products. So grain, once used to feed people, is increasingly being switched to feed animals. And rising oil prices have brought greater competition from heavily subsidized agro or bio fuels. These factors alone could lead to demand for food increasing by 70 per cent by 2050. This would be a tough enough challenge. But it is only half of a dangerous equation.

And global food crises cause geopolitical crises and conflict between major powers

Brown 11 (Lester R. Brown is the recipient of 26 honorary degrees and a MacArthur Fellowship, the Library of Congress requested Brown’s personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources,” while president Bill Clinton has suggested that "we should all heed his advice."In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. Brown helped pioneer the concept of sustainable development.Since then, he has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize., “The New Geopolitics of Food,” June 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food?page=0,2,) IN THIS ERA OF TIGHTENING world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new form of geopolitical leverage, and countries are scrambling to secure their own parochial interests at the expense of the common good. The first signs of trouble came in 2007, when farmers began having difficulty keeping up with the growth in global demand for grain. Grain and soybean prices started to climb, tripling by mid-2008. In response, many exporting countries tried to control the rise of domestic food prices by restricting exports. Among them were Russia and Argentina, two leading wheat exporters. Vietnam, the No. 2 rice exporter, banned exports entirely for several months in early 2008. So did several other smaller exporters of grain. With exporting countries restricting exports in 2007 and 2008, importing countries panicked. No longer able to rely on the market to supply the grain they needed, several countries took the novel step of trying to negotiate long-term grain-supply agreements with exporting countries. The Philippines, for instance, negotiated a three-year agreement with Vietnam for 1.5 million tons of rice per year. A delegation of Yemenis traveled to Australia with a similar goal in mind, but had no luck. In a seller's market, exporters were reluctant to make long-term commitments. Fearing they might not be able to buy needed grain from the market, some of the more affluent countries, led by Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China, took the unusual step in 2008 of buying or leasing land in other countries on which to grow grain for themselves. Most of these land acquisitions are in Africa, where some governments lease cropland for less than $1 per acre per year. Among the principal destinations were Ethiopia and Sudan, countries where millions of people are being sustained with food from the U.N. World Food Program. That the governments of these two countries are willing to sell land to foreign interests when their own people are hungry is a sad commentary on their leadership. By the end of 2009, hundreds of land acquisition deals had been negotiated, some of them exceeding a million acres. A 2010 World Bank analysis of these "land grabs" reported that a total of nearly 140 million acres were involved -- an area that exceeds the cropland devoted to corn and wheat combined in the United States. Such acquisitions also typically involve water rights, meaning that land grabs potentially affect all downstream countries as well. Any water extracted from the upper Nile River basin to irrigate crops in Ethiopia or Sudan, for instance, will now not reach Egypt, upending the delicate water politics of the Nile by adding new countries with which Egypt must negotiate. The potential for conflict -- and not just over water -- is high. Many of the land deals have been made in secret, and in most cases, the land involved was already in use by villagers when it was sold or leased. Often those already farming the land were neither consulted about nor even informed of the new arrangements. And because there typically are no formal land titles in many developing-country villages, the farmers who lost their land have had little backing to bring their cases to court. Reporter John Vidal, writing in Britain's Observer, quotes Nyikaw Ochalla from Ethiopia's Gambella region: "The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands." Local hostility toward such land grabs is the rule, not the exception. In 2007, as food prices were starting to rise, China signed an agreement with the Philippines to lease 2.5 million acres of land slated for food crops that would be shipped home. Once word leaked, the public outcry -- much of it from Filipino farmers -- forced Manila to suspend the agreement. A similar uproar rocked Madagascar, where a South Korean firm, Daewoo Logistics, had pursued rights to more than 3 million acres of land. Word of the deal helped stoke a political furor that toppled the government and forced cancellation of the agreement. Indeed, few things are more likely to fuel insurgencies than taking land from people. Agricultural equipment is easily sabotaged. If ripe fields of grain are torched, they burn quickly. Not only are these deals risky, but foreign investors producing food in a country full of hungry people face another political question of how to get the grain out. Will villagers permit trucks laden with grain headed for port cities to proceed when they themselves may be on the verge of starvation? The potential for political instability in countries where villagers have lost their land and their livelihoods is high. Conflicts could easily develop between investor and host countries.

Global resource wars lead to catastrophic nuclear proliferation

Klare 6 (Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, “The Coming Resource Wars,” March 9 2006 http://www.alternet.org/story/33243/the_coming_resource_wars,) "Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion or national honor." Until now, this mode of analysis has failed to command the attention of top American and British policymakers. For the most part, they insist that ideological and religious differences -- notably, the clash between values of tolerance and democracy on one hand and extremist forms of Islam on the other -- remain the main drivers of international conflict. But Reid's speech at Chatham House suggests that a major shift in strategic thinking may be under way. Environmental perils may soon dominate the world security agenda. This shift is due in part to the growing weight of evidence pointing to a significant human role in altering the planet's basic climate systems. Recent studies showing the rapid shrinkage of the polar ice caps, the accelerated melting of North American glaciers, the increased frequency of severe hurricanes and a number of other such effects all suggest that dramatic and potentially harmful changes to the global climate have begun to occur. More importantly, they conclude that human behavior -- most importantly, the burning of fossil fuels in factories, power plants, and motor vehicles -- is the most likely cause of these changes. This assessment may not have yet penetrated the White House and other bastions of head-in-the-sand thinking, but it is clearly gaining ground among scientists and thoughtful analysts around the world. For the most part, public discussion of global climate change has tended to describe its effects as an environmental problem -- as a threat to safe water, arable soil, temperate forests, certain species and so on. And, of course, climate change is a potent threat to the environment; in fact, the greatest threat imaginable. But viewing climate change as an environmental problem fails to do justice to the magnitude of the peril it poses. As Reid's speech and the 2003 Pentagon study make clear, the greatest danger posed by global climate change is not the degradation of ecosystems per se, but rather the disintegration of entire human societies, producing wholesale starvation, mass migrations and recurring conflict over resources. "As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to abrupt climate change," the Pentagon report notes, "many countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity" -- that is, their ability to provide the minimum requirements for human survival. This "will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression" against countries with a greater stock of vital resources. "Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations with a falling supply of food, water, and energy, eyeing Russia, whose population is already in decline, for access to its grain, minerals, and energy supply." Similar scenarios will be replicated all across the planet, as those without the means to survival invade or migrate to those with greater abundance -- producing endless struggles between resource "haves" and "have-nots." It is this prospect, more than anything, that worries John Reid. In particular, he expressed concern over the inadequate capacity of poor and unstable countries to cope with the effects of climate change, and the resulting risk of state collapse, civil war and mass migration. "More than 300 million people in Africa currently lack access to safe water," he observed, and "climate change will worsen this dire situation" -- provoking more wars like Darfur. And even if these social disasters will occur primarily in the developing world, the wealthier countries will also be caught up in them, whether by participating in peacekeeping and humanitarian aid operations, by fending off unwanted migrants or by fighting for access to overseas supplies of food, oil, and minerals. When reading of these nightmarish scenarios, it is easy to conjure up images of desperate, starving people killing one another with knives, staves and clubs -- as was certainly often the case in the past, and could easily prove to be so again. But these scenarios also envision the use of more deadly weapons. "In this world of warring states," the 2003 Pentagon report predicted, "nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable." As oil and natural gas disappears, more and more countries will rely on nuclear power to meet their energy needs -- and this "will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security." Although speculative, these reports make one thing clear: when thinking about the calamitous effects of global climate change, we must emphasize its social and political consequences as much as its purely environmental effects. Drought, flooding and storms can kill us, and surely will -- but so will wars among the survivors of these catastrophes over what remains of food, water and shelter. As Reid's comments indicate, no society, however affluent, will escape involvement in these forms of conflict.
Global political aggression leads to nuclear war

Hermann 1 (Charles F. HermannBrent Scowcroft Chair of International Policy Studies Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Program Director for Masters Program in International Affairs George Bush School of Government and Public Service Texas A&M University “Enhancing Crisis Stability: Correcting the Trend Toward Increasing Instability”, 2001, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RtNub6rfBNsJ:www.voxprof.com/cfh/hermann-pubs/Hermann-Enhancing%2520Crisis%2520Stability%2520Correcting%2520the%2520Trend.pdf+&cd=21&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) From the perspective of policy-makers in a country, an international politico-military crisis exists when they perceive a severe threat to the basic values of their political system from sources that are at least partially outside their polity; when they believe there is relatively short time before the situation (if unaltered) will evolve in ways unfavorable to them; and when they have an increased expectation that in the near future there will be an outbreak of military hostitilies or a sharp escalation of already existing hostilities.3 The period of extreme antagonism and severe competition that has marked relations between the Soviet Union and the United States since World War II has been punctuated by such crises. In the most recent years there has been no shortage of provocations by either side——the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American insertion of Marines in Lebanon backed by naval and air strikes against Syrian controlled areas, the Soviet shooting down of a civilian airliner with Americans including a Congressman aboard, the American air strikes against Libya or the shooting of a US. Major on duty in East Germany by one of their soldiers. Despite such aggressive acts toward one another, these provocations fail to meet our criteria for a major crisis and lead to the observation that recent years have not entailed the kind of episodes that earlier transpired repeatedly over Berlin, or the Cuban missile crisis, or the potential escalation during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Crises, as defined, can put force in several different ways: 1. Crises can expose technical features of strategic plans or had been disregarded. ICBMs, the process of fuel fueled the missiles had to 1 time or a refueling proces initiated. These features co pressures of a crisis. 2. Crises may require as defensive preparations ( highly susceptible to misintended by the initiator : Page 3 Charles P. Hermann ledly rejected in actual cases to date regarded by political leaders at a more laments as probably suicidal. Because :1, one might conclude, as many have, include beginning abruptly as a bolt out of achieving potential political advantage, makes nuclear war seem less remote.

Economy Turn

Loss of Biodiversity has massive negative implications towards the Economy

Open Knowledge 11 (Open knowledge, an Allianz initiative. Allianz (help·info) SE[2] is a German multinational financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core business and focus is insurance. As of 2010, it was the world's 12th-largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine,[3] as well as the largest financial services company when measured by 2012 revenue. “Biodiversity loss spells economic crisis “ , May 7, 2011 http://knowledge.allianz.com/environment/food_water/?1486/conservation-biodiversity-loss-economic-crisis-ecosystem) bcWe are living through the greatest mass extinction of life in about 65 million years. We lose three species an hour to urbanization, deforestation, overfishing, climate change, and invasive species, reckons the United Nations.It is shocking to think of a world without tigers or orang utans, but species loss is just the tip of the iceberg .‘Biodiversity’ includes not just species but the genes that make species and the ecosystems that support them. Therefore biodiversity loss ranges from the eradication of ancient seed varieties to the destruction of coral reefs. What’s gone unnoticed until recently is how expensive biodiversity loss can be, between 2 and 4.5 trillion dollars in 2008, according to a landmark UN report The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).That’s more than the 1.7 trillion dollars in economic costs that the Stern Review calculates will result from the same year’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions .In other words: biodiversity loss will hit the global economy harder than climate change. That’s because biodiversity provides us with vital ‘ecosystem services’ like fertile soil and freshwater. Forests, for example, provide flood prevention and drought control services, as well as nutrients and freshwater for farming, fuel wood for cooking, fodder for cattle, construction materials and foods. Over a billion of the world's poorest people depend on these services, which are generally available free.And therein lays the problem.“ The economic invisibility of nature’s flows into the economy is a significant contributor to the degradation of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity,” writes Pavan Sukhdev, leader of the UN's Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity initiative, in the foreword to TEEB. Markets simply don’t value nature’s bounty accordingly. The consequences can be catastrophic. Protective measures Decades of mangrove deforestation to make way for shrimp farms and other developments left victims of the Asian tsunami in 2004 defenseless. Short-term profits dictated that the mangroves must go; longer-term thinking that valued the mangroves' protective qualities would have saved lives.When consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) surveyed corporate attitudes to biodiversity loss, they found that only 27 percent of 1100 global CEOs said they were concerned or extremely concerned. “Corporates need to start thinking about ecosystems as an extension of their asset base, part of their plant and machinery, and appreciating the value they deliver,” commented Jon Williams, partner, sustainability and climate change, PwC. Clearly not many people have noticed that 60 percent of the planet’s ecosystem services have been degraded in the last 50 years.Nor is anyone doing much about it. "We failed miserably," said Jean-Christophe Vie of The International Union for Conservation of Nature in early 2010, referring to the globally agreed target of slowing the rate of plant and animal extinction by 2010. However, in the autumn the international community tried again at the UN Convention on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan. Delegates agreed to at least halve the rate of loss of natural habitats by 2020 and to create protected conservation zones in 17 percent of all land areas (currently 13 percent) and 10 percent of all marine areas (currently 1 percent).In line with this the European Commission has adopted a new strategy to halt biodiversity loss and restore 15 percent of degraded ecosystems in the EU by 2020. Among its main targets are more sustainable agriculture and forestry and better management of fish stocks. However, as with the Nagoya document, the plan is more a collection of targets and guidelines than a firm commitment with specific measures. Those will have to come laterAs the EC plan recognizes, we’re not just talking about losing exotic wild animals and plants. The farm down the road is also threatened.Where are the bees?Consider the strange deaths of honey bee colonies around the world. Insecticides, parasites, and pollution have been blamed, but whatever the causes the consequences can be devastating. Pollination is worth about 153 billion Euros annually, representing 9.5 percent of global agricultural output for human food, according to TEEB. In 2007, the collapse of bee colonies cost agriculture in the United States 15 billion dollars. Soil erosion, accidentally introduced pests, and overfishing cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And if coral reefs were to disappear, 152 billion dollars of annual revenues would go with them.There are huge economic opportunities in biodiversity conservation. Dynamite fishing may net short-term profits but in the long run if you kill the coral reef the fish (and the tourists) will disappear. Meanwhile the certified organic food market, which protects biodiversity and ecosystem services, has mushroomed to over 40 billion dollars annually worldwide. The obvious answer to biodiversity loss is to properly value ecosystem services and species: to pay our debt to nature by paying people to protect it. The REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative would operate along these lines by paying forest nations not to cut down their trees. In the United States, investors can get banking credits for protecting wetlands and there are other new schemes for biodiversity credits in the pipeline. Now the challenge is to persuade businesses, politicians, and the public that nothing in nature comes for free.

Conservation is economically significant

Edwards and Abivardi 98(Peter J. Edwards & Cyrus Abivardi

Geobotanical Institute ETH, Zurichbergstrasse 38, 8044 Zurich, Switzerland, “The value of biodiversity: Where ecology and economy blend, Elsevier Biological Conservation, Volume 83, Issue 3, March 1998, Pages 239–246, http://www.sciencedirect.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/science/article/pii/S0006320797001419) BC As problems of environmental change become more evident, we increasingly realize how much we depend upon wildlife for a wide range of so-called ecosystem services. These services, which include soil protection, pest control and the supply of clean water, are to a significant extent provided by natural and semi-natural ecosystems which in the past were thought to have little or no economic significance. This recognition has important implications for conservation. The emerging discipline of ecological economics provides methods for assessing the economic value of wildlife. While it is idle to pretend that the application of such methods will solve the biodiversity crisis, economic analysis can be useful in strengthening the case for conservation. Such analysis can demonstrate the potentially high economic value of wildlife, and reveal more clearly the economic and social pressures which threaten it. It is argued that while nature reserves and other protected areas will always be important, we must shift our attention increasingly to the preservation of biological diversity within the major forms of land-use. High priority must be given to finding ways of restoring biological diversity and enhancing ecosystem function in those areas which have already been seriously damaged. In these tasks ecological economics has an important role to play.

Biodiversity key to Developing economies and peoples

Christie et. al. 12 (Mike Christie, Ioan Fazey, Rob Cooper, Tony Hyde, Jasper O. Kenter, Aberystwyth University, UK, University of St. Andrews, UK, University of Aberdeen, UK, “An evaluation of monetary and non-monetary techniques for assessing the

importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to people in countries

with developing economies”, Volume 83, November 2012, Pages 67–78, November 2012, http://ac.els-cdn.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/S092180091200328X/1-s2.0-S092180091200328X-main.pdf?_tid=8badde8a-f704-11e2-b800-00000aacb35f&acdnat=1374961149_9c74378dea09ef5b055b485fb601fa5b ) BC Biological diversity underpins ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services that are essential in supporting human existence, for health, well-being and the provision of livelihoods (Costanza et al., 1997; Daily, 1997; MA, 2005; Sachs et al., 2009; Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2000; TEEB, 2010a). Global biodiversity is increasingly threatened by a range of drivers of change, including population and economic growth, land use change and climate change. As a consequence, biodiversity continues to decline at unprecedented rates (Butchart et al., 2010; MA, 2005; Stern, 2006; TEEB, 2010a; Turner et al., 2009; United Nations, 2007;WWF, 2006). Despite international commitments (through among others the Convention on Biological Diversity), the target agreed by theWorld's governments in 2002‘to achieve by 2010 a significantly reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level’ has not been met (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010). Much of the World's biological resources are located in least developed countries (LDCs) (Fisher and Christopher, 2007) and it is likely that the drivers of change will have a disproportionately higher impact on biodiversity in these countries (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010). Furthermore, it is often the people from these poorest nations that have the greatest immediate dependency on biodiversity and ecosystem services to meet their basic needs. Thus, it is likely that the poor will face the impacts of biodiversity loss more rapidly and severely (MA, 2005; Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010). Developing an understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and the benefits that it provides to the poor is therefore essential to develop policies that both protect biodiversity and sustain the livelihoods of people in LDCs. An increasingly important aspect of effective conservation and development policies is the valuation of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services (TEEB, 2011b). The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that ‘… economic valuation of biodiversity and biological resources is an important tool for well-targeted and calibrated economic incentive measures’ and encourages the Parties to ‘take into account economic, social, cultural, and ethical valuation in the development of relevant incentive measures’ (CBD's Conference of the Parties, Decision IV/10). The CBD's commitment to utilising biodiversity values was further strengthened in 2011 through the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in which it set governments with the goal that ‘By 2020, at the latest, biodiversity values havebeen integrated into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies’ (CBD Conference of the Parties, Decision X/2). Understanding the true value of biodiversity and ecosystem services and embedding these values in decision-making therefore appears essential for ensuring more equitable and sustainable policies. The recent TEEB initiative provides useful guidance on how the economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem services might best be incorporated into decision making at: the national and international policy level (TEEB, 2011b); the local and regional policy level (TEEB, 2011a); by businesses (TEEB, 2011c); and by citizens (http://bankofnaturalcapital.com/). Over the past few decades, environmental and ecological economists have developed a range of methods capable of measuring the value that people attain from biodiversity and associated ecosystem services(Christie et al., 2006; Eftec, 2006; Nunes and van den Bergh, 2001; TEEB, 2010a). Most of this research, however, has been conducted in the mostdeveloped countries (MDCs) (Abaza and Rietbergen-McCracken, 1998; Georgiou et al., 2006; van Beukering et al., 2007), and currently there is only limited data on the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in LDCs (TEEB, 2010a).). TEV provides an anthropocentric view of the instrumental value of biodiversity and includes both use andnon-use values. Use values include direct use benefits (such as the consumption of provisioning and cultural services), indirect use benefits(through the contribution of biodiversity to the maintenance of regulation services), and option value (where people attain satisfaction frompossible future use of provisioning, regulating and cultural services)(Table 1). TEV also includes the concept ofnon-use values, which includealtruistic values (the satisfaction of knowing that other people haveaccess to nature's benefits), bequest values (the satisfaction of knowingthat future generations will have access) andexistencevalues (satisfactionof knowing that a species or ecosystem exists) (Table 1).Although TEV provides a useful (and much used) framework inwhich to value the economic benefits from biodiversity, the conceptdoes have its limitations and therefore may not capture all the bene-fits that biodiversity provides. Alternative value frameworks includesocial and ecological values (TEEB, 2010a). Socialbenefits include mentalwell-being, ethical, religious, spiritual and cultural values, which areoften prominent in LDCs (UNEP, 1999); . Biodiversity may also deliver ecological benefits which include the maintenance of many of the essential life support processes (e.g. soilformation, nutrient cycling). Althoughsuch services clearly contribute to people's welfare, the complexity andthe indirect nature of the benefits often means that they cannot readilybe expressed through monetary valuation techniques (Farber et al.,2002), and non-monetary methods may be required to uncover the importance of these benefits.

Biodiversity loss causes monetary losses – Turns case

Watts 10 (Jonathan Watts, award-winning journalist and president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, “Biodiversity loss seen as greater financial risk than terrorism, says UN”, October 27, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/27/biodiversity-loss-terrorism, MS) The financial risks posed by the loss of species and ecosystems have risen sharply and are becoming a greater concern for businesses than international terrorism, according to a United Nations report released today.¶ From over-depletion of fish stocks and soil degradation caused by agricultural chemicals to water shortages and mining pollution, the paper – commissioned by the UN Environment Programme and partners – said the likelihood has climbed sharply that declines in biodiversity would have a "severe" $10bn (£6bn) to $50bn impact on business.¶ With the European Union and other regions increasingly holding companies liable for impacts on ecosystem services, it suggests banks, investors and insurance companies are starting to calculate the losses that could arise from diminishing supplies, tightened conservation controls and the reputational damage caused by involvement in an unsound project.¶ Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and Unep executive director, said: "The kinds of emerging concerns and rising perception of risks underlines a fundamental sea change in the way some financial institutions, alongside natural resource-dependent companies, are now starting to glimpse and to factor in the economic importance of biodiversity and ecosystems".¶ The briefing paper cites the 55% crash of BP's share price and the decline of its credit rating in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as an extreme example of the potential impact of inadequate environmental controls.¶ Richard Burrett, who co-chairs the Unep Finance Initiative and authored the report, said such cases highlighted the need for a new form of risk assessment that takes the value of ecological services into account. Water systems and forests are currently considered "externalities" that do not show up on corporate books. In the past year, he said, biodiversity loss is increasingly seen as a business concern and that a World Economic Forum survey in 2010, found it was perceived as a greater economic risk than international terrorism.¶ But he insisted this should be just the start. "The way we assess the performance of companies is flawed. It does not account for all externalities," said Burrett in releasing the briefing paper, which is aimed at executives and fund managers. "We believe we must bring these externalities into mainstream accounting."¶ For the report, the UN commissioned a study of 3,000 of the world's biggest corporations, which found them responsible for $2.15 trillion in environmental costs in 2008, equivalent to 7% of their combined revenues and about a third of their profits. Based on this figure, the report estimates that institutional investors with a $100m holding in a typical diversified equity fund could "own" $5.6m in external costs.¶ However, the authors note that awareness of biodiversity risks is still at an early stage, partly because they remain difficult to quantify. Concerns are clearly very different from nation to nation. This year, PwC conducted a separate study that found strong awareness of biodiversity risks among South American executives, but worldwide it said only two of the world's largest 100 companies saw loss of species and ecosystems as a strategic business risk.

Environmental degradation is the root cause of all conflict

Foster 00 (Gregory Foster, civilian professor at the National Defense University, September 2000, http://www.aepi.army.mil/internet/china-environmental-dragon.pdf) It has now been more than two decades since the Worldwatch Institute’s Lester Brown first issued a plea to adopt a new and more robust conception of national security attuned to the contemporary world. The threats to security, he argued even then, now may arise less from relations between nations than from man’s relations with nature—dwindling reserves of critical resources, for example, or the deterioration of earth’s biological systems: The military threat to national security is only one of many that governments must now address. The numerous new threats derive directly or indirectly from the rapidly changing relationship between humanity and the earth’s natural systems and resources. The unfolding stresses in this relationship initially manifest themselves as ecological stresses and resource scarcities. Later they translate into economic stresses—inflation, unemployment, capital scarcity, and monetary instability. Ultimately, these economic stresses convert into social unrest and political instability.1 Brown was followed—cautiously at first—by others who recognized the need not only to expand the bounds of national security thinking and discourse, but to take particular account of environmental concerns in such deliberations. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, then affiliated with the World Resources Institute, argued, for example: “Global developments now suggest the need for . . . [a] broadening definition of national security to include resource, environmental and demographic issues.”2 One of the most powerful observations made to date—one that could be judged, in equal measure, as either visionary or hyperbolic—is that by writer-analyst Milton Viorst, who argues that “population and environment . . . seem the obvious sources of the next wave of wars, perhaps major wars.”3…CONTINUES…Where Homer-Dixon is especially insightful is in leading us in the direction of the most powerful counterargument that can be made to resolute critics of environmental causation. He says that whereas, on first analysis, the main causes of civil strife appear to be social disruptions (e.g., poverty, migrations, ethnic tension, institutional breakdown), in reality scarcities of renewable resources, including water, fuelwood, cropland and fish, can precipitate these disruptions and thereby powerfully contribute to strife. By broadening his formulation, we may posit the existence of a more general masking phenomenon by which ostensibly political and economic causes of unrest, violence, conflict, and destabilization (e.g., political repression; economic deprivation, exploitation, and dislocation) actually may mask underlying, less visible, less discernible environmental sources of dissatisfaction, discontent, and alienation (e.g., diminished quality of life; threats to safety and well-being).

Econ decline causes war

ROYAL 10 Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense

[Jedediah Royal, 2010, Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215]

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level. Pollins (20081 advances Modclski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 19SJ) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fcaron. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states arc likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Mom berg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write. The linkage, between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict lends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other (Hlomhen? & Hess. 2(102. p. X9> Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blombcrg. Hess. & Wee ra pan a, 2004). which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and Blombcrg. Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force arc at least indirecti) correlated. Gelpi (1997). Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that Ihe tendency towards diversionary tactics arc greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked lo an increase in the use of force. In summary, rcccni economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict al systemic, dyadic and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

Global Conflict