What am I bid for the atmosphere? Or would you like to put in an offer for the oceans? Privatisation of these global 鈥渃ommons鈥� might just be the future of conservation.
In a major publication later this month from Britain鈥檚 Royal Society, environmental economists will argue that traditional methods of government-run conservation have failed: protected areas, gene banks and international aid have been found wanting. The economists say it鈥檚 time for capitalism to take charge. They want the environment parcelled out to the private sector, with market forces influencing everything from cleaning up our rivers and atmosphere to protecting forests and soils.
鈥淲e can create and manage our environment as a business and make sustainability pay for itself,鈥� says Ian Swingland of the University of Kent, who compiled the study to be published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Next month the US and other nations at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg are also expected to call for conservation to be privatised. But many environmentalists say this will simply steal the planet鈥檚 resources from the poor and worsen poverty.
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The model for market-based conservation is the US鈥檚 success in curbing acid rain by creating a market in permits to emit sulphur dioxide, the main culprit. The strategy cut the expected costs by 90 per cent. The Kyoto Protocol envisages doing the same for greenhouse gases.
The economists see this process going much further. For one thing, the Kyoto Protocol proposes allowing foresters to sell the carbon-absorbing capacity of their trees. If they could make money from keeping trees standing, that would also help protect the world鈥檚 biodiversity, the economists argue. And extending the rules to cover carbon in soils could trigger a farming revolution by encouraging farmers not to plough, which produces CO2. That would benefit both farmers and the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, you could expand markets in trading water if polluters get to make money out of cleaning up their pollution. That should mean dirty rivers can once again be used for drinking or irrigation.
But to succeed, 鈥渙wnership of the environment is fundamental,鈥� says Richard Sandor, chairman of a leading US-based environment financial products company. And critics fear this is just the beginning of problems for the poor. Natasha Landell-Mills of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development warns that the rules of trading will, in practice, often be skewed to suit the most powerful interests.
Hundreds of millions of poor people live in forests that provide many of their daily needs, without having formal ownership. If the process of privatisation excluded them, they would undoubtedly be worse off.