Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

Abstract

Increasing evidence-synthesized in this paper-shows that economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss via greater resource consumption and higher emissions. Nonetheless, a review of international biodiversity and sustainability policies shows that the majority advocate economic growth. Since improvements in resource use efficiency have so far not allowed for absolute global reductions in resource use and pollution, we question the support for economic growth in these policies, where inadequate attention is paid to the question of how growth can be decoupled from biodiversity loss. Drawing on the literature about alternatives to economic growth, we explore this contradiction and suggest ways forward to halt global biodiversity decline. These include policy proposals to move beyond the growth paradigm while enhancing overall prosperity, which can be implemented by combining top-down and bottom-up governance across scales. Finally, we call the attention of researchers and policy makers to two immediate steps: acknowledge the conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation in future policies; and explore socioeconomic trajectories beyond economic growth in the next generation of biodiversity scenarios.

Keywords: biodiversity conservation; biodiversity loss; biodiversity policy; biodiversity scenarios; decoupling; degrowth; economic growth; postgrowth; sustainability policy; transition.

FIGURE 1

How economic growth contributes to biodiversity loss. Economic growth increases resource use and trade, which in turn impact biodiversity via various mechanisms reviewed in the text (climate change, land‐use change, and invasive species). Source: our own

FIGURE 2

Opening up scenario development for biodiversity conservation. SSPs are descriptions of alternative societal trajectories which are used in scenario development for biodiversity. Here, currently available SSPs (SSP1 to SSP5) are displayed according to their envisaged economic growth rates (in GDP terms) and biodiversity conservation levels (adapted from O'Neill et al., 2017; see this reference for a description of SSPs). Up to now, all SSPs consider positive economic growth rates, and no pathway is included whereby high levels of biodiversity conservation can be achieved with low or negative economic growth. To explore this opportunity space (wider circle in Y axis), we propose to add a new SSP called “beyond economic growth” (see Box 2)

FIGURE 3

(a) U.S. genuine progress indicator (GPI) and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, in 2000 U.S.$ (yearly data for 1950–2004). Source: Talberth, Cobb, and Slattery (2007), U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2005), and United Nations (n.d.). (b) U.S. GDP, in billions of 2012 U.S.$ (decennial data for 1850–1920, yearly data for 1929–2018). Source: Barro and Ursúa (2010), United Nations (n.d.), U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2019), and U.S. Census Bureau (1990). (c) Mean species abundance in the U.S. Historical trend (data for years 1850, 1900, 1910, 1940, 1980, and 2015) and projections (2050) for different SSP. Source: Data on historical trend and projections for SSP1, SSP3, and SSP5 were provided by J.P. Hilbers, R. Alkemade, and A.M. Schipper. The value for SSP0 is our speculation (see Section 6 for details on SSP0). See SM3 for details on figures' sources and methods.