Europe | Biodiversity is priceless

Summary

The European Union's work for climate resilience continues with the recent progress toward the European Climate Law and the definition of the biodiversity strategy for the next decade.

Key points

• Key points:
• The fight against climate change needs long-term policies that are more far reaching than current policies, with heavy emphasis on emissions budgets.
• There also needs to be a price on other negative environmental externalities in order to compensate for their overexploitation, as is the case with biodiversity.
• Biodiversity is the (shrinking) variety of organisms that form the terrestrial biosphere, it is the natural capital that supports life and, together with productive capital and human capital, it provides services for economic activity.
• Only by internalizing the costs and benefits of biodiversity can effective climate change mitigation strategies be designed. Biodiversity is priceless, but its loss comes at a cost.

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