Between services provided by nature and preservation of biodiversity, contradictory injunctions

In a European and national context where agricultural issues seem to lead to opposing the preservation of biodiversity – for example of common insects and birds – and economic challenges, taking into account our dependence on biodiversity appears more and more crucial.

We thus see that integrating economic logic into ecological and agricultural transition policies leads to contradictory injunctions: either protect biodiversity in order to improve soil fertility or water purification, or use chemical inputs to increase or maintain returns.

To understand this phenomenon, we propose to explore the notion of “contribution of nature to humans”: it distinguishes three types of human relationships with biodiversity, distinct by their ecologies and their socio-economic issues.

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Material, intangible and regulatory contributions

Let’s start with material contributions, which unsurprisingly come in the form of goods and services. Profits are exchanged on various markets, with political regulation. The modes of appropriation by humans (company, sector, State, etc.) determine who has access to biodiversity and is able to preserve it, for example by planting and maintaining hedges on agricultural land.

The intangible contributions, then, are provided by the quality of a landscape, the presence of an emblematic species, and are of a mental, spiritual, educational nature. They provide both material (job creation through nature tourism) and immaterial (maintaining identity) benefits. Natural spaces, reserves, national parks benefit both residents, tourists and visitors, and biodiversity and all living beings.

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Also read: Review our vision of nature to reconcile biodiversity and agriculture

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The third type concerns regulatory contributions: associated with the ecological functions of ecosystems, they are represented by air and water quality, climate regulation or pathogens and often do not have direct and immediate benefits.

Unlike the previous categories, they are most often not socially recognized, although they also benefit all humans and others living in a given territory. Let us cite the example of pollination, for which no one is held responsible, water quality or even the state of health of bird and insect communities.

Arbitrations and contradictory injunctions

The most widespread arbitration between material, immaterial and regulatory contributions is generally made in favor of the former. Thus, we favor the production of wood at the expense of forest biodiversity, we drain wetlands to increase agricultural areas. This choice arises from the belief that it is economically more interesting to use biodiversity than to preserve it, a belief based on short-term local analyses.

Longer assessments on larger scales, however, underline the economic relevance of protecting nature associated with regulatory and intangible contributions, which benefit all human and non-human stakeholders.

In other words, there are significant social costs to material uses of nature, which come at the expense of these two other types of contributions. This is the case of deforestation, which has the effect of accelerating climate change. This leads to contradictory injunctions between preserving and using nature.

An environmental justice problem

These different injunctions are all the more antagonistic as their costs are unequally distributed, often with a stronger impact on disadvantaged populations.

These populations then indirectly “subsidize” material contributions by being more exposed to externalities, which translate socially into increased risks of exposure to toxic substances and hazards (such as fires, floods, etc.). Managing these risks results in costly solutions or consequences (insurance, illness), which pose acute justice problems.

In such a context, it is relevant to distinguish three components of environmental justice:

• recognition justice (understanding and recognizing the diversity of points of view, those of naturalists, farmers, local authorities),

• procedural justice (allowing inclusive and equitable participation in decision-making processes, both for entrepreneurs and younger generations or women)

• and distributive justice (fairly distributing the benefits from biodiversity and nature’s contributions).

Distributive injustice

While progress has been made in procedural justice and recognition justice, distributive justice seems less well treated, requiring more equitable governance in the distribution of resources and risks.

The latter, linked in particular to ignorance of the importance of the regulatory and intangible contributions of nature, perpetuate and exacerbate a vicious circle which leads to socio-ecological traps, especially for the most vulnerable groups. Thus, the poorest households in southern countries use wood for cooking food, while accelerating deforestation and therefore harming the renewal of the forest ecosystems on which they depend.

The terms “economic waste” or “market failures” are sometimes associated with these externalities. At the international level, this concerns poor countries exporting primary products (rice, coffee, fibers, palm oil, minerals) and leads to a transfer in favor of importing countries, in particular rich countries, which are exempt from their costs when the final price of products does not include compensation for negative externalities suffered in producing countries.

The problem associated with these “hidden subsidies” is that the too low price of the final products stimulates unnecessary or even harmful consumption in view of the planet’s capacities. These deleterious processes, which primarily affect the most vulnerable, are often encouraged by research and development spending preferentially oriented towards new products and technologies rich in negative externalities – such as poorly recyclable plastics or GMOs when they promote homogenization of landscapes.

The role of public arbitrations

These reflections highlight the importance of the notion of distributive justice, in public and private decisions relating to biodiversity and the human activities which affect it. The State and the United Nations have a major role to play, their responsibilities being to defend the general interest and to avoid contradictory injunctions between economic efficiency, environmental preservation and social justice.

One of our recent research highlights the need to have quality institutions to circumvent these contradictions.

It therefore appears urgent, before each public decision including support for economic activities, to address and answer the following questions:

• What is the extent of the losses borne by ecosystems or the most disadvantaged social groups in the event of an extension of material contributions? What are the modalities of appropriation of these material contributions, who benefits from them?

• How can the different categories of nature’s contributions be protected by public authorities?

• What trade-offs between these various contributions would encourage environmental justice, the preservation of ecosystems and the response to human demands, in a way understandable to all stakeholders?

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Also read: Biodiversity and climate, why mobilize the crucial concept of transformative change

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