Di Blog Nov 08

It’s been a fascinating month as I have been in two separate worlds, the world of here and now, doing presentations on how to set up community based tourism enterprises in Sulawesi in Indonesia, and the world of the future for wildlife, forests and the human race in Barcelona at the IUCN Conservation Congress and in Delhi, at a workshop that I helped bring together through my campaign called Travel Operators for Tigers entitled, ‘The last chance for Tigers’.

What strikes me so often with all this is the terrifying chasm between what we all know needs to be done - and done soon - to save the very ecosystems by which we exist, and the business as usual attitude that we find so much easier to understand and relate to, and which is what we have learnt to be the normal way of doing things.

The notion of ‘Ecosystem services’ or the ‘Value of natural biodiversity’ would hardly register on the radar of most tourism professionals even though it’s on these very services of clean water, pristine forests, unadulterated seas and natural biodiversity that our very industry exists. Of 8000 delegates at the conservation congress there were only 8 travel professionals – a damning inditement of my own Travel industry I feel, who so often pay lip service to the environment – more interested in how many pillows are in a lodge bedroom than the quality of the environment in which their clients exist.

In Barcelona the cost of ecosystem services is the hottest topic for most conservationists. How do we ‘value’ these services which today are not even valued, do not have a price tag - or even recognised as an asset base in any countries Gross National product.

I was privileged to be on a panel discussion with a host of luminaries including Pavan Sukdev, who recently published a groundbreaking report for the IUCN entitled the ‘The economics of Biodiversity’ looking at how economists, policymakers and conservationist can start to value these so called ‘free’ services in a way that creates much greater economic value to saving them, that polluting them or chopping them down.

As Pavan says ‘Every time you chop down a tree in a rainforest you are doing the equivalent of using up your own capital in the bank, destroying your own ability to finance yourself, or your economy in the future’. That tree may provide you with energy today to cook you food, but it would have provide you with a water reservoir, ensured you have clean air to breath, fertile soil to grow your food, health products and a over 14 other ‘services’ that we are only just beginning to try and put a price on today. By the time we have priced it up you and I will never be able to afford to chop down that tree – and won’t that be a good thing!