TEEB study: make natural resources visible to global economy

We easily determine how important a role commodities play on our economy, but what about our planet's natural assets? The impact of a healthy environment on the global economy is huge but often goes unnoticed. Forests, soils, freshwater and coral reefs are just some of Earth's resources that help fuel our economy; insects such as bees contributed over EUR 150 billion to the economy annually through pollination, for example.

However, the significance of many of these 'ecosystem services' often remains invisible, triggering species loss and ecosystem degradation, according to the latest Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study, a major global initiative supported by the European Commission Environment Directorate-General (DG Environment). The study was presented at the Convention on Biological Diversity's 10th Conference of Parties (CBD COP10) session in Nagoya, Japan on 20 October.

'TEEB has documented not only the multi-trillion dollar importance to the global economy of the natural world, but the kinds of policy shifts and smart market mechanisms that can embed fresh thinking in a world beset by a rising raft of multiple challenges,' says Pavan Sukhdev, a banker who heads up the Green Economy Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and leader of the TEEB study. 'The good news is that many communities and countries are already seeing the potential of incorporating the value of nature into decision-making.'

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