Cost to Prevent All Future Extinctions: $11 per Person? [View all]

[XemaSab]

A global effort to prevent all future species extinctions would cost about $80 billion a year, or $11.42 annually from every person on the planet, according to a study published last week in Science.

The study, released in conjunction with eleventh meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) currently underway in Hyderabad, India, is intended to support goals and commitments to halting extinctions and preserving nature by the year 2020 that the world’s governments have agreed to under the convention.

More specifically, the study finds that lowering the extinction risk for all of the species that are currently known to be threatened would cost the first $4 billion per year. Protecting and managing key habitats would cost an additional $76.1 billion.

How did the study come to these conclusions? Well, it’s important to note that the two lead authors come from BirdLife International and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and they used birds as their key to unlocking some answers about protecting all species. (Other authors come from the United Nations Environment Programme, Princeton University, the World Wildlife Fund, the University of Cambridge and half a dozen additional organizations.)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2012/10/16/cost-prevent-extinctions/