Profitable biodiversity

Abstract

Business is both the main driver of the planet’s current catastrophic loss of biodiversity and the key to stemming it. To address this challenge, a business strategy is developed wherein firms launch profitable business lines that harness market forces to fund projects that result in the enhancement of biodiversity. This strategy leverages existing systems for managing at-risk ecosystems and introduces a new procedure for minimizing the costs of such projects while maximizing their positive impacts on biodiversity. These business lines are built by first, understanding the political context of a particular biodiversity threat; second, designing a profitable product or service that is tied to a minimum-cost project that enhances biodiversity; and third, reporting the current and future impact of the project to those customers who want to know if their purchases are actually curbing the destruction. A new parameter learning algorithm within a political-ecological system simulator is used to model how the actions of firms change the beliefs of people to the point where they adopt ecosystem-preserving behaviors. The newly developed and available software that implements this procedure is applied to the conservation of white (Ceratotherium simum) and black (Diceros bicornis) rhinoceroses in South Africa.