Biodiversity and Social Policy Bonds

Already the UN has conceded that the targets for safeguarding wild species and wild places in 2010 have been missed: comprehensively and tragically. Talk has not halted biodiversity loss - now it's time for action, Guillaume Chapron and George Monbiot, Guardian.co.uk, 13 August

It's a tough one. Some Guardian readers' ideas, many of them worth considering, are presented here. Could the Social Policy Bonds principle help? Part of the problem is to clarify whether biodiversity is a means to an end or an end in itself; and another is how to quantify what biodiversity is and what we want from it.

One option could be to for experts to list their top, say, 10000 plant and animal species, according to their intrinsic value, or their status as indicator species, representing the broader state of the environment, including biodiversity. It would probably be impractical to legislate effectively against serious depredations of such a large number of species. But a Biodiversity Bond, following the Social Policy Bond principle, could be issued, perhaps by a combinatin of governments, non-governmental organizations, and environmental bodies. What would such Biodiversity Bonds target? Not the health or survival of the full panoply of 10000 species; that would be too complex and expensive. But what about the health and habitats of, say, 100 of these species? That would be a fairly simple matter. The key to such a regime is that the 100 species would not be known in advance by either the bonds' issuers or investors in the bonds.

Instead, the 100 species could be randomly chosen from the 10000 towards the end of bonds' stipulated expiry period. The bonds could target a broad definition of biodiversity, encompassing the 10000 species, 30 years hence. Towards the end of that 30 years, 100 out of those 10000 species or habitats would be randomly chosen. If all 100 were doing well, surviving and thriving, the bonds would be redeemed. If not, they wouldn't.

Bondholders would then have incentives to preserve biodiversity of all the 10000 species (or ecological systems), but there need be no onerous, contentious and expensive monitoring of all 10000 species. Only a fairly small sample, randomly chosen after 29 years, need be examined. That, in my view, would make targeting biodiversity a practical proposition.

Your thoughts or comments on this idea are particularly welcome.