In April 2015, the Senate voted on a bill, already validated by the Assembly, concerning the publication of wealth indicators to complement GDP measurement. Three themes were selected by the parliamentarians: quality of life, national heritage, and finally, the environment. On this last point, climate change and biodiversity are the two components retained. While the issues related to considering biodiversity are easy to grasp, establishing functional indicators to measure it poses a real challenge. This bill allows us to think that progress is possible. Let’s hope it does not end up being just a report without real practical implications, as was the case with the Stiglitz Commission, whose conclusions, delivered in 2009 a few months before the launch of the Year of Biodiversity, did not lead to a genuine overhaul of wealth indicators.
GDP, a blunt economic measurement tool that overlooks environmental issues
The reform of GDP and the consideration of the environment in our economic system is a long-standing issue. For decades, GDP has been criticized and contested: it only allows reasoning in terms of flows and is incapable of measuring the real quality of life of a population or environmental degradation. However, it remains the main measure of the "health" of countries worldwide. The impacts of our economic model on biodiversity are known: habitat destruction, the spread of invasive species, pollution of all kinds, and overexploitation of natural resources. Yet, GDP remains silent on these phenomena. In economic jargon, it is said that it does not take into account environmental externalities, meaning the actions of economic agents whose consequences, positive or more often negative, are ignored by market mechanisms. Therefore, a reform of GDP appears necessary.
Changing the economy to better protect biodiversity
Moreover, the ecological crisis and the economic crisis have common roots, and it can be argued that they feed off each other. Preserving biodiversity and our ecosystems would also be a way to ensure the sustainability of our economies. This is what the essayist Naomi Klein asserts in her latest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Combating climate change and biodiversity loss requires changing our economic model; a model that is anyway heading for its downfall if it continues to destroy natural capital. We must succeed in reconciling the economy and the environment to meet human needs on one hand and protect biodiversity on the other. Credible biodiversity indicators understood by all will not immediately lead to a radical change in our economic system, but they are a necessary step.
Indicators with limited reach
But how to proceed? A multitude of indicators already exists, and biodiversity is difficult to measure. How can we translate qualitative aspects into quantitative ones? How can we measure the degradation or improvement of ecosystems, habitats, and species whose complexity we sometimes barely grasp? Building a global, macroeconomic, and synthetic indicator seems challenging. Green GDP has long been presented as a solution to reconcile growth measurement with environmental state measurement. In 2012, during the Rio +20 summit, UNEP launched the Genuine Wealth Index, an indicator that considers environmental degradations in calculating the wealth of countries. Beyond the technical debates that the indicator itself sparked, it was the lack of enthusiasm from public actors to adopt it that somewhat buried this tool.
Microeconomic indicators driven by civil society and the private sector to reform GDP?
The integration of the environment and biodiversity into public accounting can be facilitated by the approach of economic actors who are already making this effort today. Companies, through tools like life cycle analysis, indicators such as ecological footprint or biocapacity, attempt to measure the impact of their activities on biodiversity. Their actions can thus lead to a better consideration of biodiversity at the macroeconomic level. However, these indicators remain imperfect and cannot be used in all situations; their relevance depends on the production context or the logic of the actors who use them. A reflection is needed on ecosystem services. While biodiversity is not limited to these services, they provide an entry point for better understanding and integrating it into economic decisions. An indicator that measures variations in the services provided by ecosystems could thus be relevant for reconciling biodiversity and economic activity. Economic evaluations conducted by Vertigo for the Coastal Conservatory show that the service-based approach is relevant for linking environment and economy. The values associated with the different services provided by ecosystems resonate with economic actors and allow them to better measure the impact of their decisions. Therefore, solutions exist to reconcile the measurement of biodiversity and the measurement of economic activity. However, these technical solutions for integrating the environment into private and public accounting will only be truly effective if they are accompanied by a genuine willingness from all actors to change. Our economic models must indeed evolve to allow for better protection of biodiversity.
