ABSTRACT
Economics provides a useful perspective for understanding human relationships with biodiversity. Many industrial materials are derived directly from biological sources. These include building materials, fibers, dyes, rubber and oil. Biodiversity is also important to the security of resources such as water, timber, paper, fiber, and food. Biodiversity loss is a significant risk factor in business development and a threat to long term economic sustainability. Loss of biodiversity results in the loss of Natural capital that supplies ecosystem goods and services. The economic value of 17 ecosystem services for Earth’s biosphere Is estimated to be US$ 33 trillion (3.3×1013) per year (Costanza et al., 1997). Biodiversity enriches leisure activities such as hiking, bird watching or natural history study. Biodiversity inspires musicians, painters, sculptors, writers and other artists. Many cultures view themselves as an integral part of the natural world which requires them to respect other living organisms. Indian culture emphasizes people to live in harmony with nature. Popular activities such as gardening, fish keeping and specimen collection strongly depend on biodiversity. Philosophically it could be argued that biodiversity has intrinsic aesthetic and spiritual value to mankind. This idea can be used as a counterweight to the notion that tropical forests and other ecological realms are only worthy of conservation because of the services they provide. Biodiversity supports many ecosystem services that are often not readily visible. It
plays a part in regulating the chemistry of our atmosphere and water supply. Biodiversity is directly involved inwater purification, recycling of nutrients and providing fertile soils. Experiments with controlled environments have shown that humans cannot easily build ecosystems to support human needs; for example insect pollination cannot
be mimicked, and that activity alone represents tens of billions of dollars in ecosystem services per year to humankind. But ecosystem services are not valued or taken into national accounting. Biodiversity, is a public good that is provided to everyone, rather like Law and Order and defence. It does not confer any property right. Market economics, left to itself, typically under-provide public goods. Thus property rights work well for bread as a private good, but much less well for a public good such as genetic variation in wheat types. The full social benefits of tigers, rhinos, portfolios of germplasm, marine resources of a global commons, and so forth, are public goods beyond appropriation by markets, even when market value is fully enhanced by all the devices of the law. Therefore, new policies are required which help enable public goods to be managed for the benefit of society.
