As parties meet this week in Montreal to discuss the UN post 2020 biodiversity framework, we hope that they will keep financial markets on biodiversity destruction out of the framework, as it has been demonstrated that they cannot work.
Putting a monetary value on the environment has been shown to be impossible due to high scientific uncertainty, incomplete scientific knowledge, the inability to model all ecosystem functions and related interdependences, major weaknesses and biases in valuation methodologies, incalculable additionality of offset projects and the inexistence of a price signal.
So let us keep the same ambitious objectives but replace the broken market tools with sound environmental regulation.