How do trade, poverty and climate policies affect biodiversity?

Over the past 50 years humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history. However, the changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial gains in human well-being and economic development. For the coming 50 years, the degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse. In this paper, we selected a number of policy options initiated. The options considered in this paper are: (1) Liberalization of agricultural markets, (2) Alleviation of extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and (3) Limiting climate change by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration levels that coincide with the target of 2°C stabilization compared to pre-industrial levels. The impacts of these policy interventions on biodiversity and economic performance are assessed. The quantitative analysis shows that most options are too little or too late to significantly decline the further loss of biodiversity. For limiting climate change (bio-energy) and poverty alleviation (increasing GDP) initial losses in the medium term (2010 -2030) of biodiversity seem to be inevitable but improvements are foreseen in the much longer term. In the long run can demographic transitions and poverty reduction be expected to ease this pressure. Implementation of full trade liberalization leads to an additional biodiversity loss until due to a global increase of land used for agriculture. All options have an economic impact or ‘costs’. In most cases there is a trade-off between biodiversity and economic growth. In the case of trade liberalization and poverty reduction higher economic growth comes at the expense of global biodiversity. However, on the regional, national and local scales there may be biodiversity and economic gains due to safeguarding a variety of functions from which –eventually- humanity entirely depends (see also the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment). Economic costs and biodiversity gains may be spread over time. Climate change policy will decrease economic growth, while beneficial effects on biodiversity and the economy (or avoided cost) can only be expected in the long run.