One of the greatest miss-understandings that we come to accept is that capitalism and biodiversity cannot co-exist, that economy growth cannot happen without giving up our biodiversity.
Biodiversity is the variety of all living organisms (plant animals and microorganisms) and their relationship with the ecosystems. The term applies for all the variety of genes (DNA), variety of species (birds, plants, etc) and ecosystems (coral reefs, estuaries etc ). Biodiversity indicates a measure of the variety of life that resides in the biosphere. The loss of our biodiversity due to economic exploitation is becoming a global issue that will challenge policy makers and the industry in the upcoming years. Studies have found that species have been disappearing at up to 1000 times the natural rate and this is predicted to increase. An estimated 34,000 plants species face extinction, up to 10 per cent of coral reefs have been destroyed.
Up to now we have adopted the view that economic activity depends on natures provisions and that in order to grow we need to exploit it to the extreme. Biodiversity was largely kept outside the economic equation and treated as a brake to economic prosperity. In recent years however researchers have shown how certain economic activities that are geared and focused only on growth are causing larger economic losses when ecological dynamics are considered. For example one study on climate change shows how forestry financing could reduce carbon emission. Forests account for 17 per cent global emission. If the international community does nothing to reduce deforestation the global economic costs of climate change could reach 1$ trillion by 2100 in addition to other sectors. By including forest sector in the global carbon market the cost of reducing global carbon emission will be reduced. For pharmaceutical industry natural products offer a wide variety of chemical diversity and the wildlife is necessary for its industry as this is based on genetic diversity, most of which is found in wild forests. For some countries the services provided by fishing activities amount to a considerable proportion of their economic activities and are now challenged by the need to overcome overexploitation.
Conservative economic theories are becoming obsolete against the mounting evidence that new findings suggest and this is being recognised in the corporate world by leading multinational companies such as Unilever that are quickly reorganising their productive structure as a result. We need to readapt and rethink how we use our resources or this will compromise future generations forever. Agriculture production will increase as market demand will intensify and this will not be sustainable in the future