Making Biodiversity Protection More Efficient

 

Analysis & Critique: A Georgist Perspective on Conservation Funding

“Twenty-five years of misinterpreting the biodiversity hotspot approach”

Robert J. Smith & Hermenegildo Matimele

A quarter of a century after its publication, the biodiversity hotspot concept remains one of the most cited and influential frameworks in conservation science. But its real-world impact is poorly documented in peer-reviewed literature, which hinders the development of new approaches for prioritizing conservation action.

This comment piece by Smith and Matimele makes a crucial observation: the legendary success of the ‘Biodiversity Hotspots’ concept depended not on academic rigour, but on a pragmatic funding and implementation mechanism (the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund – CEPF). As a practical conservationist who has spent 30 years creating biodiversity hotspots, I have some further critiques of this approach from a land economics perspective, which is the real issue hindering the development of new approaches for prioritising conservation action.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02903-4.epdf

From a Georgist standpoint, the paper inadvertently exposes the central, unstated problem in conservation: it is fundamentally a real-estate problem, and conservation NGOs are perpetually outbid.

Core Georgist Critique

The paper’s findings perfectly illustrate the Georgist thesis that the privatisation of economic rent makes conservation prohibitively expensive. Here’s how:

1. The ‘Cost-Effectiveness’ Paradox is a Land-Value Problem

The original hotspots paper was framed around ‘cost-effective measures’.

From a Georgist perspective, the primary ‘cost’ in conservation is the opportunity cost of the land — the foregone economic rent that could be captured by converting the land to agriculture, urban development, or resource extraction.

The CEPF’s model of raising hundreds of millions to fund local projects is essentially a system of paying a ransom to outbid alternative, rent-seeking land uses. It is a reactive, donor-dependent battle against the financialisation of nature.

2. The ‘Implementation Mechanism’ is a Workaround for a Flawed Economic System

The paper reveals that the crucial work — creating ecosystem profiles and identifying priority sites — happens after a hotspot is selected for funding. This is a fine-scale triage system necessitated by limited capital.

Why is capital limited? Because the very system that creates the conservation crisis (speculative land-value increases) also siphons away the capital needed to solve it. Public and philanthropic funds are depleted by the need to provide services and mitigate problems (such as housing crises and infrastructure deficits) that are exacerbated by the same land speculation.

3. The ‘Mismatch’ is a Symptom of Economic Blindness

The authors lament that academics focus on producing ever-better maps instead of understanding the implementation context.

The Georgist critique is that both academics and practitioners are largely blind to the root economic driver: land as a speculative asset. They are trying to fix a leak with a better bucket instead of turning off the tap.

The paper calls for ‘comprehensive datasets on implementation context’. The most critical dataset missing is the map of rising land values and economic rent within and around these biodiversity hotspots — the true metric of conservation cost.

How a Land Value Tax (LVT) Would Transform This Model

A Georgist solution would fundamentally change the economics of conservation:

Eliminate the Speculative Premium:
An LVT, by taxing the annual rental value of land, would collapse its speculative resale price. The cost of acquiring land for conservation (through purchase or easement) would plummet, as it would be valued on its current use, not its potential for future conversion.

Create a Self-Funding Mechanism:
Revenue from a national or global LVT could fund conservation at a scale dwarfing all current philanthropic efforts. Instead of the CEPF raising £300 million over decades, public revenue could sustainably fund conservation in perpetuity, transforming it from a charitable cause into a core public good.

Automatically Reward Stewardship:
Under an LVT system, land left in a natural state (low-intensity use) would have a very low rental value and thus a low tax bill. This makes conservation the economically rational choice for landowners, rather than a charitable act requiring external funding. It internalises the positive externality of conservation.

Make ‘Cost-Effectiveness’ Meaningful:
Conservation planning would no longer involve deciding which few areas can be ‘ransomed’ from development. It would become a genuine exercise in prioritising the most ecologically valuable areas for protection, as the financial barrier to protection would be radically lower.

Conclusion: Reframing the Problem

Smith and Matimele have correctly identified that a brilliant map is useless without a funding and delivery vehicle. However, they stop short of asking why the vehicle is so necessary and so limited.

The Georgist critique posits that the CEPF is a brilliant but ultimately insufficient ambulance service at the bottom of a cliff. The cliff is an economic system that rewards the private capture of land value, which systematically inflates the price of conservation and fuels the land-use changes that destroy biodiversity.

The paper’s call for ‘coproduction’ between academics and practitioners is valid, but it needs a third partner: political economists. Until conservation science directly confronts the issue of economic rent and land valuation, it will remain a financially constrained, reactive endeavour — forever struggling to implement its elegant, data-driven plans in a world where the underlying economics are rigged against it.