How Biodiversity Hopes to Match Climate’s Investing

More than a million species face potential demise in what might be the biggest extinction event since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. Yet efforts to enlist private capital in the fight to protect the Earth’s biodiversity have barely gotten off the ground. One obvious model is the financial infrastructure that’s developed around the related goal of combating climate change, which has drawn in billions of dollars in investments. Doing the same for biodiversity faces steeper obstacles. Carbon dioxide can be measured, priced and traded. But how do you value a swamp or a newly discovered frog that pollinates flowers? Challenges in the market were highlighted in August, when a so-called debt-for-nature swap by Gabon failed to win over some investors.

The variety of species within a region. Wherever robust populations of many forms of life swarm in and around each other — think tropical rainforests and coral reefs — they reinforce the ecosystem’s stability. By contrast, an area dominated by a narrower group becomes more vulnerable to sudden change if environmental conditions change. That’s one reason biodiversity and climate change are seen by scientists as intertwined crises. When tropical rain forests are burnt to expand farmland, species-rich habitats are destroyed and carbon dioxide released; in the years that follow, more frequent and intense wildfires tear through the degraded forests, destroying habitats further and releasing even more CO2.