The Nature Darwin Debate 2: What Price Biodiversity?

9 March 2009 at 7pm

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People pay for their food, water, healthcare and energy, so why not pay for the many ‘services’ currently obtained for free from biological diversity? Services such as insect-pollination, which is key to food production, or healthy forests, which are needed for clean water and to stop soil erosion. Is there not a case for investment in biodiversity in order to secure future needs? Join three leading lights from science and politics as they debate the merits of putting a price on the Earth’s ecosystem services.

Speakers:

• Prof James Lovelock, independent scientist & author of Revenge of Gaia
• Michael Meacher MP (Labour, Oldham West and Royton), former Minister of State for the Environment
• Sir Crispin Tickell, former UK representative at the UN, now at the University of Oxford.

In the chair will be Nature Senior Editor Ehsan Masood, author of Science and Islam: A History and Dry: Life Without Water (with Daniel Schaffer).