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The green suits
Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by The Economist: Daily news and views.
The economics of biodiversity and business
While climate scientists lament the fact that their flagship compendia, such as the IPCC reports, come under endless attack, scientists working on other environmental issues would love such high-profile pronouncements, even if they came with a similar cost. IPCC-envy was one of the rationales for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published in 2005, and it is the main impetus behind the current development of an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. When the equally inelegantly named TEEB process (it stands for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) was set up at the G8+5 meeting in Potsdam in 2007 its political patrons had a clear model in mind. They hoped that just as Lord Stern’s review of the economics of climate change, published in 2006, firmed resolve for action among governments and helped set in motion the processes that led to last year’s Copenhagen climate conference, so this new report should encourage a more serious global approach to the costs that damaged and dysfunctional ecosystems impose on people.
It’s worth noting that this approach implicitly assumes, as do many people, that the point of the IPCC and such endeavours is to find reasons for action, rather than dispassionately to assess the issue. Another caveat is that, as far as the climate is concerned, big and well publicised reports have manifestly not delivered the goods in terms of what UN negotiators call “environmental integrity”—producing actions that really do reduce emissions. But that does not mean that the TEEB process is either propagandistic or pointless. Treating the services provided by ecosystems as part of the economy is a good idea, and the various ways in which their value can be sustained, or even enhanced, deserve study. …
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Quality of death
Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by The Economist: Daily news and views.
A ranking of care for the dying by country
CUSTOMER-satisfaction surveys are, alas, unsuitable for rating the quality of death. So the Economist Intelligence Unit has devised a ranking of end-of-life care, published on Wednesday 14th July. It rates 40 mostly rich countries by how well they care for the dying. Britain tops the table. For all the health care system’s faults, British doctors tend to be honest about prognoses, the mortally ill get plentiful pain killers and a well-established hospice movement cares for people near death. Countries such as Denmark and Finland rank lower because they concentrate more on preventing death than on helping people die without suffering pain, discomfort and distress.
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Invest in China
Posted on 07. Jul, 2010 by The Economist: Daily news and views.
Agricultural Bank of China’s IPO may be the biggest in history
THE initial public offering of Agricultural Bank of China, the country’s third-largest bank, looks set to become the biggest IPO on record. On July 6th and 7th the bank raised a reported $19.3 billion in a dual listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges. If the bank takes up a further 15% allotment of shares, that would value the deal at a total of $22 billion, slightly more than the offering in another Chinese bank, ICBC, in 2006. In the 1990s telecommunications was the investors’ choice but in the last decade the biggest IPOs have been mostly in the financial sector, and mainly of Chinese banks.
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Too green to fail
Posted on 07. Jul, 2010 by The Economist: Daily news and views.
When it comes to protected areas, less really can mean more
Thomas Brooks, a biologist with NatureServe, a conservation group based in Arlington, Virginia, has long been fighting to preserve biodiversity in the Philippines. Quite often it can feel like a lost cause. Conservation efforts in the country have struggled against ever greater deforestation and decades of environmental neglect. You might think that, when Mr Brooks heard that the Philippine government is considering opening some of its protected areas to mining, it would have been the last straw. Instead, it was an occasion for hope.
According to Theresa Mundita Lim, Director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, who made the announcement at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nairobi, the move on mining is part of a larger strategy to improve how much biodiversity the government protects. By cutting spending on areas that are lower-priority and instead putting the money where it will be more effective in protecting nature, she hopes to get more impact out of the limited conservation funds available. …
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Too green to fail
Posted on 07. Jul, 2010 by The Economist: Daily news and views.
When it comes to protected areas, less really can mean more
Thomas Brooks, a biologist with NatureServe, a conservation group based in Arlington, Virginia, has long been fighting to preserve biodiversity in the Philippines. Quite often it can feel like a lost cause. Conservation efforts in the country have struggled against ever greater deforestation and decades of environmental neglect. You might think that, when Mr Brooks heard that the Philippine government is considering opening some of its protected areas to mining, it would have been the last straw. Instead, it was an occasion for hope.
According to Theresa Mundita Lim, Director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, who made the announcement at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nairobi, the move on mining is part of a larger strategy to improve how much biodiversity the government protects. By cutting spending on areas that are lower-priority and instead putting the money where it will be more effective in protecting nature, she hopes to get more impact out of the limited conservation funds available. …
