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A Biodiversity Hotspots Treaty: The Road not Taken

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Abstract

After brief introductory comments on the Dasgupta Review, I turn to a subject little discussed in this report, the Convention on Biological Diversity. I explain the many weaknesses of this agreement, and its greatest missed opportunity: a protocol to conserve biodiversity as a global public good. This value of biodiversity represents only a fraction of the total value of conservation, but it’s the fraction that can only be supplied by a global treaty. I explain the flaws in the current approach by parties to the Convention of target setting, the advantages of a focus on biodiversity hotspots, and the reasons another treaty, the World Heritage Convention, has failed to conserve hotspots representing humankind’s biodiversity heritage. I then sketch a model showing that collective action in conserving global biodiversity hotspots can be supported by a self-enforcing treaty. The road not taken looks far more promising than the one we’ve been on since 1992.

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Notes

  1. A new high seas treaty is now being negotiated, to include rules for establishing marine protected areas in the high seas (rules that, among other purposes, must clarify whether states must consent to having their freedom in these areas restricted or whether such restrictions can be decided by a subset of states).

  2. As of February 2022, of the Convention’s 196 parties, only 133 have joined Nagoya; non-participants include Australia, Canada, and Russia. The United States is a non-party to the Convention and both of its protocols.

  3. Radiative forcing depends on atmospheric concentrations, but also other sources of forcing, including the concentration of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, aerosols, surface albedo, clouds, changes in solar irradiance, volcanoes, etc. Atmospheric temperature depends on radiative forcing, and dynamically on exchanges between the oceans and the atmosphere.

  4. For an early application of this concept in an economics model, see Barrett (1993).

  5. An exception is when a group of sufficient size is able to act so as to change the behavior of the other states, an approach studied by Nordhaus (2015) and Barrett and Dannenberg (2022). Of course, for this approach to work, the set of likeminded countries needs to be at least as large as the set needed to stimulate “tipping.”

  6. According to the IUCN, a little less than 16% of terrestrial area and 8% of marine area is protected as of February 2022; see https://www.protectedplanet.net/en.

  7. https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/efb0/1f84/a892b98d2982a829962b6371/wg2020-02-03-en.pdf.

  8. See https://www.conservation.org/priorities/biodiversity-hotspots.

  9. See Weitzman (1998).

  10. Wilson (2016) notes the potential of the World Heritage Convention for protecting biodiversity in an appendix.

  11. For “natural sites,” the Committee is advised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

  12. https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/.

  13. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat/.

  14. https://whc.unesco.org/en/world-heritage-fund/.

  15. See Frey and Steiner (2011). Lynn Meskell, an anthropologist witness of the process observed, “Over the past eight years of my research, I sat through many World Heritage Committee meetings, and I noticed that when it’s time to discuss matters of conservation, most countries’ delegates don’t bother to participate. All they care about is whether their sites end up on the World Heritage List, so that they could use them in tourism strategies.” See https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/19/stanford-scholar-examines-unescos-world-heritage-program/.

  16. Theoretically, it is even possible that supply of the private good of eco-tourism suffices to conserve the globally optimal amount of biodiversity; see Heal (2003).

  17. The United Kingdom followed the US’s lead, withdrawing in 1985, and rejoining in 1997. The UK’s International Development Secretary wanted the UK to withdraw again in 2018, in response to Trump’s announced withdrawal, but did not win support of the Cabinet.

  18. https://whc.unesco.org/en/world-heritage-fund/.

  19. Another problem is that the Committee favors the listing of sites under the jurisdiction of its own 21 members. A proposal was made to prohibit the Committee from nominating sites under the jurisdiction of its members, but this would have to be approved by the Committee itself, and the Committee rejected the proposal (Meskell 2013).

  20. In the model above, this outcome would only emerge if the parameter values happened to be of the right magnitudes: \({k}_{N}^{*}={n}^{N}\iff {n}^{N}>\left({c}^{S}-{b}^{S}\right)/{b}_{N}^{S}>{n}^{N}-1.\)

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  1. Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) & Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, United States

    Scott Barrett

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Barrett, S. A Biodiversity Hotspots Treaty: The Road not Taken. Environ Resource Econ 83, 937–954 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00670-5

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