Briefing for Westminster Hall debate
on International Year of Biodiversity
16 Sep 2010
INTRODUCTION
Biodiversity can be described as “the variety of genes, species and ecosystems that constitute life
on earth”.1 In layman’s terms, what is essentially meant by the term biodiversity is wildlife and
habitats. Whilst many people hold an affection for and desire to protect wildlife and habitats, and
there is a growing recognition of the perilous state of biodiversity, what is often poorly understood
is the vital importance of maintaining biodiversity for the health and well-being of humanity itself.
Vital ‘ecosystems services’ on which human life depends such as oxygen, fresh water, carbon
storage, pollination and more are dependent on the health of the world’s biodiversity.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was agreed in 1992. Since 2002, 193 countries
have committed themselves to substantially reducing rates of biodiversity loss by 2010. 87% of
signatories to the CBD have now developed National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.
However, in 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, biodiversity continues to decline and it is
abundantly clear that targets will not be met as admitted by Secretary of State for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs, Rt Hon Caroline Spelman MP, when launching Defra’s Natural
Environment White Paper discussion document in July this year, and by European
Commissioner, Jan Potocnik, following the EU Environment Council meeting in March 2010.
BIODIVERSITY, WILDLIFE & HABITATS – SUMMARY STATISTICS

The United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4)
report warned that the vital natural resources which support life on Earth have suffered
significantly since the first such report, published in 1987. The report warned that humanity
itself could be at risk if nothing is done to address the three major environmental problems of
a growing human population, climate change and the mass extinction of animals and
plants.2

Scientists generally agree that we are heading towards a sixth mass extinction in the planet’s
history. Unlike the previous five, this one is being driven largely by man. Scientists estimate
that extinction rates today are as high as 1,000 times higher than the background rates (i.e.
natural levels of extinction) of the past.3

The IUCN red list of threatened species, lists 17,936 species as threatened with extinction
(this is based on 52,017 species assessments so far completed which at best is estimated to
be about only 10% of species in existence). This means that one in five of the world's
mammals, one in eight birds, nearly a third of amphibian, reptile and fish species and nearly
70% of the world's assessed plants on the current list are in now in jeopardy.4

12% of the Earth’s land surface has protected area status but only 0.5% of oceans and 5.9%
of territorial seas have been so designated. However, many protected areas are underresourced or weakly managed. More than two-thirds of critical sites for biodiversity have
incomplete protection or none at all.5
Rands, Michael R. W., et al., ‘Biodiversity Conservation: Challenges Beyond 2010’, Science 329, pp.1298-1303 (2010)
United Nations Environment Programme, ‘Global Environemnt Outlook, GEO4, Environment for development’, UNEP
October 2007: http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/ [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
3 Natural Environment Research Council: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/biodiversity/sixth.asp [accessed 15 Sep
2010]. see also IUCN Red List, ‘Why is biodiversity in crisis?’, 3 sep 2010, http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/biodiversitycrisis [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
4 See IUCN Red List summary statistics, http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/summary-statistics [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
5 Cited in Rands et all. as above, p.1300
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IFAW briefing on Westminster Hall debate on International Year of Biodiversity, 16 Sep 2010
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THREATS & PRESSURES ON BIODIVERSITY
Continued growth of human populations and of per capita consumption of resources has resulted
in unsustainable exploitation of the world’s biodiversity. Key pressures driving biodiversity loss
are overexploitation of species, invasive alien species, pollution, climate change and degradation,
fragmentation and destruction of habitats.6
Two areas where IFAW works to prevent biodiversity loss are protecting endangered wildlife from
commercial trade and protecting and restoring vital habitats.
Overexploitation of species & wildlife trade
It is estimated that the illegal wildlife trade may be worth as much as US$20 billion annually.7 This
is second only to the illicit trade in drugs and arms, and it involves many of the same organized
criminal elements as drugs and arms trades.
The 2010 report on ‘The Globalization of Crime’ from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) 8, dedicated a whole chapter to environmental crime, highlighting the threat from
transnational organised crime to endangered species, and identifying key routes in wildlife trade
from Africa to South-East Asia.
The report highlighted trade in elephant ivory, rhino horns and tiger parts as three prime
examples of endangered species being illegally traded, estimating the trend in this trade to be
increasing, and worth (conservatively) something like $75 million annually for just these three
species.9
Since 1975, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has provided
a legal framework that regulates trade in listed species between countries. Today, CITES gives
varying degrees of protection to more than 33,000 species of animals and plants.
Yet species such as elephants are under threats from attempts in CITES to downgrade protection
for these species. New requests to sell stockpiles of ivory from southern African countries are
likely to come at the next CITES conference in 2013, despite the alarming rise in seizures of
illegal ivory (averaging now 3 a day), since the last sales of stockpiles in 2008. Elephant poaching
in Kenya has more than doubled in the last year, which the Kenyan Wildlife Service attributes
directly to the stockpile sales in 2008.10 IFAW agrees. Any legal market in ivory creates a
smokescreen for illegal traders to launder illicit ivory into the system. In 2009, China, one of the
approved buyers of the stockpiled ivory in the 2008 sale, seized ivory products from citizens
returning to China on 710 separate occasions – the highest number of reported ivory seizures in
a single year by any country in the world.11
The Government must do more to protect endangered species from trade and, in particular, carry
out the pledges in the Coalition Programme to press for a ban on ivory sales and to tackle the
smuggling and illegal trade in wildlife.
Those in favour of maintaining trade in certain threatened species often play the ‘poverty card’ in
support of trade, claiming that limiting trade will harm the economies of poor communities, or
reduce the opportunity for people to obtain income from natural resources. However, most wildlife
products are used to supply nothing more essential than markets for luxury items, exotic
foodstuffs or traditional medicines for growing affluent middle classes, and it is more often than
not the middle men and traders who reap the profits rather than communities in the source
6
Rands et al., p. 1299
see TRAFFIC: http://www.traffic.org/trade/ [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
8 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ‘The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime
Threat Assessment’, Vienna: UNODC, 2010
9 Ibid., p.17
10 Clarke, J., ‘Demand from wealthy makes elephants unfair game’, Mail & Guardian, http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-0913-demand-from-wealthy-makes-elephants-unfair-game [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
11 TRAFFIC, ‘Chinese citizens risk imprisonment for ivory smuggling’, http://www.traffic.org/home/2010/9/13/chinesecitizens-risk-imprisonment-for-ivory-smuggling.html [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
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IFAW briefing on Westminster Hall debate on International Year of Biodiversity, 16 Sep 2010
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countries. In any event, there is nothing that will devastate poor communities more than the
complete collapse of wildlife populations due to overexploitation, removing a potential resource
for generations to come.
The Government should also therefore seek to help promote non-consumptive use of wildlife,
such as ecotourism. As the UNODC report notes, ‘Africa’s wildlife population, including many
large mammal species, is part of what makes the continent unique. It is the basis for a tourist
trade that comprises a key part of many national economies’.12 If this wildlife is traded to
extinction by vested interests then tourist industries and national economies will suffer in the longrun.
The growth of whale-watching is a perfect example of how non-consumptive use can benefit
biodiversity. Responsible whale watching offers a humane and sustainable alternative to whaling.
An IFAW report released in 2009 documents the continuing dramatic growth and expanding
economic contribution of whale watching worldwide. The country-by-country economic analysis
shows more than 13 million people took whale watching tours in 119 countries worldwide,
generating ticket fees and tourism expenditures of around US$2.1 billion during 2008. The report
also shows dramatic growth of the whale watching industry over the past decade. More than
3,000 whale watching operations around the world now employ an estimated 13,200 people.13
Protecting and reconnecting habitats
Since 1992, the amount of protected areas globally has continued to grow, increasing yearly by
an average of 2.5% in total area, and 1.4% in numbers of sites, now covering more than 24
million km2 in approximately 133,000 sites. Scientific research has shown the importance of
maintaining suitable habitats on a large-scale and connected basis.14
IFAW also works to protect and restore vital habitats, including in Tsavo National Park in Kenya,
Manas National Park in India and a new project to begin in Liwonde National Park in Malawi, as
well as efforts to support enforcement and infrastructure development in such parks. IFAW also
funds pioneering research in southern Africa on trans-boundary conservation to allow migratory
animals such as elephants to disperse over a greater range and prevent the need for culling due
to the perception of there being too many elephants. IFAW has also previously funded, through
our partner organisation the Wildlife Trust of India, the restoration of wildlife corridors between
protected areas to allow wildlife to follow traditional migratory paths, sustaining populations and
preventing human-animal conflict.
The Coalition Programme for Government contains the pledge to introduce measures to protect
wildlife and promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and
restore biodiversity. The Government must equally support such measures internationally,
particularly in biodiversity hotspots and for key-stone species, as well as supporting countries with
capacity building and enforcement measures to ensure that wildlife in protected areas is truly
protected.
VALUING BIODIVERSITY
There is growing recognition of the value of biodiversity and the costs of its loss. A study on The
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) has estimated that the economic value of
benefits from biodiverse natural ecosystems may be 10 to 100 times the cost of maintaining
them15, clearly demonstrating the economic sense of investing in biodiversity conservation. At a
time of severe spending restraint, investing in biodiversity is necessary, positive investment and
without it some biodiversity may be loss forever, while for that which still exists the costs of
restoring it in the future will far outweigh protecting it now.
12
UNODC, p.149
IFAW/Economists at Large & Associates, ‘Whale Watching Worldwide: Tourism numbers, expenditures and economic
benefits’. The full report www.ifaw.org/whalewatchingworldwide
14 Rands et al., p1299
15 TEEB as cited in Rands et al., p.1298
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IFAW briefing on Westminster Hall debate on International Year of Biodiversity, 16 Sep 2010
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As the authors of the TEEB report state. ‘It is hard to think of any other asset where we would
tolerate its loss without asking ourselves what we risk losing and why. The more that we ask
these questions, the more uncomfortable we become with the current situation where nature is
being lost at an alarming rate. We realise that we often fail to ask the big questions about what
ecosystem services and biodiversity provide and their value or worth to different groups of
people, including the poorest, across the globe and over time’.16
However, the impacts on biodiversity of particular policies or actions are often distant in space
and time i.e. the effects may not happen in the same location as the action, nor may they be
obvious for many years to come. This makes effective regulation difficult, as no single body has
jurisdiction over the world’s biodiversity. It also makes transaction-based solutions difficult,
because those who damage biodiversity are often widely separated, in space or time, from those
who experience the consequences.17
Therefore, it is critical that biodiversity is understood and managed as a public good, if it is to be
conserved. As outlined by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, in its recent paper on
‘Biodiversity Conservation: Challenges beyond 2010’, economically valuing ecosystems services
and biodiversity is a part of that process but making these values explicit on their own will not be
sufficient to bring about changes in behaviour. Supporting public policies must be put in place to
penalise harmful behaviour and incentivise actions that protect biodiversity.18
This requires a radical change of approach to policy-making. The value of biodiversity must be
made an integral element of social, economic, and political decision-making, as is starting to
happen with carbon and climate change. This is not currently the case with biodiversity, yet as we
know from the UNEP Global Environment Outlook report and other scientific studies, biodiversity
loss is of equal critical importance to the survival of the planet.
For governments worldwide, the maintenance of stocks of natural capital must become an
explicit, accountable, and implemented element of policy. In the UK, for example, concern for
biodiversity must not be restricted just to Defra but must extend across all departments of
government, and into international policy.
It is vital that biodiversity loss is fully incorporated into foreign and development policy for two
reasons. Firstly, current conservation successes are strongly linked to good governance. Thus,
the role of foreign policy in promoting good governance and appropriate institutions that can
address issues of biodiversity loss is crucial. Secondly, as recognised in the Millennium
Development Goals, healthy ecosystems are the fundamental underpinning of long-term
development. Any development agenda must focus on policies that protect and enhance
functional ecosystems and biodiversity.
2010, as the International Year of Biodiversity, places the spotlight on these issues and creates a
unique opportunity to begin this change. But the UK Government must ensure that when nations
meet in Nagoya, Japan in October for the 10th Conference of Parties to the Convention on
Biological Diversity, the policy approaches above are promoted, and in the future implemented, to
prevent further biodiversity loss.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Matthew Collis, Senior Parliamentary Officer, IFAW UK
tel: +44 (0)20 7587 6712; mob: +44 (0)7801 613 536; email: mcollis@ifaw.org
TEEB, ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for National and International Policy Makers – summary:
responding to the value of nature’, 2009, p.34,
http://www.teebweb.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=dYhOxrQWffs%3d&tabid=1019&mid=1931 [accessed 15 Sep 2010]
17 Rands et al., 9.1301
18 Ibid.,
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IFAW briefing on Westminster Hall debate on International Year of Biodiversity, 16 Sep 2010
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