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We've discussed the increasing recognition of the economic value of nature before, but there could soon be a formal system for pricing biodiversity, if a proposal recently presented in Nairobi moves forward. The Green Development Mechanism (GDM) could channel $5 billion directly into conservation work by 2020.
The idea of the GDM is to take advantage of market incentives to preserve biodiversity, similarly to how the Clean Development Mechanism encourages global efforts to mitigate climate change through carbon credits. (How effective these are is a different issue entirely.) The GDM would encourage any efforts to protect diversity—in hotspots like forests and wetlands, which often attract extractive (and destructive) industries, as well as less-obvious projects like organic farms and housing developments, for example, that protect wetlands.
The way it would work is that any entity—an organization, a local community, etc.—could create a ten-year plan for sustainable use in a specific environment: forest, wetland, coastal region, or coral reef.
An IPS story about the GDM writes, "After an independent audit, the conservation plan would be certified and its 'biodiversity-protected hectares' would be put on the market for purchase."
The GDM does come with criticism: many countries and indigenous peoples say it lacks any recognition of the rights and needs of native communities. IPS reports that Francis Vorhies of Earth Mind, a sustainability network pushing the GDM, disputed this claim. He recognizes that the mechanism cannot work in areas where land ownership is disputed, and regarding the rights of indigenous peoples he said, "We want to invest in the guardians of the landscape, to give them the resources to enable them to continue to be guardians."
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