Bill Gates Could Save Biodiversity

Well, not quite. More accurately he could put up the first two and a half years of capital to preserve at least 10% of the land in every major climactic region on the planet (although with climate change his selections may not stay in their climactic region for very long). In a paper published in Nature in 1999 it was estimated that 15% of the world’s land area – the roughly 5% currently protected plus 10% strictly preserved to protect biodiversity – could be purchased and managed for roughly 23 billion annually. Bill Gates is worth somewhere between 50 and 55 billion dollars (and that is personal wealth, it doesn’t consider what he could mobilize through his foundation). The math is quite easy: 23 billion + 23 billion = the first two years of protection and some pocket change.

The numbers are even more impressive if you consider Warren Buffet’s wealth as well. Gates and Buffet have recently been involved in some high profile lobbying of the extremely wealthy, trying to get them to give away their money. So assume Buffet joins Gates in a quest to save the natural world. Between the two of them they have around 100 billion. That would get the project started and almost five years of funding and by that time I’m sure they could pull in some other donors.

Yes, it will never happen. But it’s a nice thought. No one is quite sure what Gates and Buffet plan to do with all of their money but they could have a massive impact on global conservation if they were to direct even half of their money that way. Today the global budget for wildlife conservation is less than 10 billion dollars. Imagine what could be done if that were doubled or tripled.

The nearly microscopic size of the current budget is the real take away from all of this. The U.S. alone has spent more than 15 billion a year in direct farm subsidies since the mid 1980s. We spent a little less than 10 billion a year on oil and natural gas subsidies from 2002-2008 and that hasn’t changed much since 2008. Neither of these is a necessary subsidy. In fact, have significant distortionary effects on global markets and, arguably, the competitiveness of the U.S. economy. If either or both were eliminated and the money shifted to conservation the impact on conservation efforts would be colossal. Again, it will never happen but it doesn’t hurt to think about where our priorities are and where they should be.