Exeter researcher receives Frontiers Planet Prize honour

An Exeter academic has been recognised by the Frontiers Planet Prize for providing a breakthrough to an important environmental issue.

Professor Ben Groom from the University of Exeter Business School is part of a team that has designed a new method for calculating the benefits that arise from conserving biodiversity and nature for future generations.

Their paper was judged by 100 independent experts, on a panel chaired by Professor Johan Rockström, to offer a scalable solution that can help keep humanity safely within planetary boundaries.

When decision-makers invest in public infrastructure or evaluate policies and regulations, cost-benefit analyses are made to determine the viability of the project, with biodiversity loss or the impact on ecosystem services – eg filtering air or water, pollinating crops or the recreational value of a space – converted into a current monetary value so it can more accurately be taken into account.

The researchers point out that a flaw with current pricing methods is that they fail to consider how the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services changes over time.

Their new method, which was published last year in the journal Science, takes into account how the value of nature increases as human income increases, as well as how the likely deterioration in biodiversity will make it more of a scarce resource in the future – and as a result more valuable.

The researchers say their approach is directly applicable to public policy and could help governments make decisions that more accurately reflect the benefits of conserving biodiversity.

Professor Groom held a workshop with Treasury officials about biodiversity pricing following the influential Dasgupta Review and wants the team’s method to be included in the UK government’s ‘Green Book’ – a set of guidance issued by the Treasury to help decision-makers appraise policies, programmes and projects.

Professor Groom, who is Dragon Capital Chair in Biodiversity Economics and a member of the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute (LEEP), said: “It’s a great honour that our research has been recognised by the Frontiers Planet Prize as providing a unique, transformative solution with great potential to drive change.

“It provides governments and decision-makers with a clear policy proposal: ecosystem prices should rise with income levels, just like they do in transport valuations for the value of time saved, for pollution in health, and for health in general.

“The current methods of pricing for biodiversity and ecosystem services that are used to appraise public investments and regulatory change mean that nature becomes relatively less valuable over time compared to other goods and services. This is a flawed approach, something our paper identifies and addresses in a way that could be easily deployed by governments.”

The research was nominated for the Frontiers Planet Prize by Tilburg University in the Netherlands and is led by Professor Moritz Drupp and Dr Martin C. Hänsel in collaboration with a team of leading international researchers from Germany, the UK, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United States. 

The team advises, among others, HM Treasury, the US White House, and the German Federal Environment Agency.