"Biodiversity is such an important national concern that the developing countries need to formulate policies that recognize its economic importance. The parallel is to do for biodiversity what Japan has done for microelectronics. Biodiversity in this respect would become a lead sector around which other developments would revolve. This is also a renewable resource, if treated as such, and is thus more reliable than oil or diamonds. We recently stated to a senior Kenyan government official that biodiversity was more important to Kenya than diamonds were to South Africa. We got an appointment to see him the same afternoon!"

Biodiversity is ultimately lost or conserved at the local level. Government policies, however, create the incentives that facilitate or constrain local action. Governments regularly intervene in markets to increase agricultural production, spur industrial growth, provide a "safety net" for the poor, protect the environment, and support other public goods that the market allocates poorly. Unfortunately, many industrial, transportation, natural resource, and urban development policies fail to value environmental resources correctly and may even hasten resource depletion and biodiversity loss. Indeed, some policies explicitly invite the over-exploitation of species, conversion of valuable habitats, and oversimplification of agricultural ecosystems.

Reforming such policies makes economic as well as ecological sense. Inappropriate subsidies for resource use drain national economies and impede development. Agricultural support policies in industrialized countries cost consumers and taxpayers an estimated $150 billion annually, yet lead to environmental impoverishment. Some 57 percent of the budget of the European Community went to agricultural price supports in 1990, compared to only 1 percent spent on environmental protection. Indonesia's forest policies cost the country $2 billion between 1979 and 1982. Given the magnitude of these expenditures and losses, investments in biodiversity conservation may be more than offset by savings from policy reforms.

The resource and trade policies of most countries do not take biodiversity's potential benefits into account. Enhanced food security, economic development, and improved medical care are all based on biological productivity and the diversity of genes and species. But to reap these benefits, governments must first develop a sound policy framework. Many nations fail to provide incentives for either the development or acquisition of the technical skills needed to conserve biodiversity, or to explore its capacity to yield new products.

the aim of environmental management policies should be the optimal and sustainable use of natural resources. Policies that provide incentives for the wasteful and unsustainable exploitation of such resources, and the unnecessary reduction of biodiversity should be primary candidates for overhaul. Such policies include those that promote over-exploitation of forests, damaging extension of urbanization and agriculture onto diverse natural habitats, over-use of freshwater and marine fisheries, or the excessive use of monocultures and agrochemicals.

Actions at the national level

Reform existing public policies that invite the waste or misuse of biodiversity.

• Abandon that encourage resource degradation and the conversion of forest ecosystems to other less valuable uses.

• Reform policies that result in the degradation and loss of biodiversity in coastal and marine ecosystems.

• Reform policies that hasten loss of biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems.

• Eliminate agricultural policies that promote excessive uniformity of crops and crop varieties or that encourage the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Adopt new public policies and accounting methods that promote conservation and the equitable use of biodiversity.

• Assert national sovereignty over genetic resources and regulate their collection.

• Strictly regulate the transfer of species and genetic resources and their release into the wild.

• Establish incentives for effective and equitable private-sector plant breeding and research.

• Modify national income accounts to make them reflect the economic loss that results when biological resources are degraded and biodiversity is lost.

Reduce demand for biological resources.

• Provide universal access to family planning services and increase funding to support their adoption.

• Reduce resource consumption through recycling and conservation.

• Audit the consumption of biological resources to raise awareness of the balance between local consumption and production.