Tax for eco-services

A key U.N. report on biodiversity will recommend massive economic changes like company fines to help save species and protect the natural world. The study, which is due for publication in the summer, will argue that the economic case for global action to protect biodiversity is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change.

The report will also recommend that companies are fined and taxed for over-exploitation of the natural world, with strict limits imposed on what they can take from the environment, according to the paper.

Alongside financial results, businesses and governments should also be asked to provide accounts for their use of natural and human resources. And communities should be paid to preserve natural environments rather than deplete them.

Titled "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" (TEEB), the report was launched by Brussels in 2007 with the support of the U.N. Environment Program, after G8 and major emerging economies called for a global study.

The Stern report on climate change had in 2007 claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure. The total value of "natural goods and services" like pollination, medicines, fertile soil, clean air, and water will be around 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the species and natural habitats which provide them, says TEEB.

Setting up and running a comprehensive network of protected areas would cost $45bn a year globally, according to one estimate, but the benefits of preserving the species richness within these zones would be worth $4-5tn a year.

"We need a sea change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature," said Indian economist and report author Pavan Sukhdev. The changes will involve a whole revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives, he said.