Biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate change: the economic problem

Environmental economic series, paper number 120:

This paper considers the connection between climate, biodiversity and ecosystem services. It measures the impact of climate change on human well-being by the change in ecosystem services, which includes storm buffering, erosion control, flood control and so on, caused by climate-related change in biodiversity. It also considers the role of species richness and abundance in climate change mitigation or adaptation in relation to the change in the climate-related services of biodiversity.

The paper initially looks at how climate and biodiversity have been linked in recent attempts to bring the two issues together. From the natural sciences perspective, it covers the consequences of climate change for various dimensions of biodiversity. From the social sciences perspectove, it covers the value of biodiversity in the carbon cycle. It then uses insights from the economic treatment of the relation between biodiversity and ecosystem services to re-evaluate the connection between biodiversity and climate change; and draws conclusions for climate policy.