The seminar “Economic expertise and environmental actions” welcomes
Klaudia Prodani
Department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies, University of Twente, The Netherlands
and Mathilde Salin
CIRED, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, France
Modèles et biodiversité
In recent years, attempts to take biodiversity into account in economic and financial calculations have intensified. We will explore the issues, challenges and limits of this economic and financial translation of biodiversity, through a combination of practical approaches and critical analysis of models.
The role of models in rendering biodiversity loss a systemic financial risk
Klaudia Prodani (University of Twente, Department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies, Knowledge, Transformation & Society – KiTeS)
This presentation will offer some preliminary reflections on the ways in which assemblages of biodiversity, economic, and financial models inform and constrain the rendering of biodiversity loss into a systemic financial risk by so-called “progressive” central banks. It will discuss how and why such models can be deemed performative by reviewing some landmark attempts to project possible financial losses arising from biodiversity-related physical and transition risks.
Assessing Integrated Assessment Models for building global nature-economy scenarios
Mathilde Salin (CIRED, AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay)
This presentation will review global integrated assessment models (IAMs) linking “nature” (including “biodiversity”, “natural capital”, or “ecosystem services”) and the macroeconomy and assess their suitability to help build scenarios to explore the economic consequences of nature loss and transition policies. Based on an in-depth analysis of two types of IAMs (‘stylised’ and ‘applied’), it will critically assess how they represent dependencies of the macroeconomy on nature, as well as policies to reverse nature loss. It will show that applied IAMs are generally skewed to capturing the dependency of the economy to selected provisioning ecosystem services, with regulating and maintenance services less represented. As these models tend to focus on the land-use and climate drivers of biodiversity loss, the transition policies they capture only aim to mitigate those drivers and overlook other drivers of nature loss such as pollution or invasive alien species. I will also show that some theoretical assumptions in the core macroeconomic part of ‘applied’ models may tend to mitigate the potential macroeconomic consequences of nature loss and nature transition policies. This contrasts with the results of the ‘stylised’ models reviewed, which tend to represent the loss of natural capital and biodiversity as having significant impacts on the macroeconomy. However, by contrast with applied models, stylised models make it harder to represent the impact of the loss of specific ecosystem services or specific policies to protect nature. Building on this analysis, the presentation will explore challenges and future avenues for the use of IAMs to develop scenarios that account for the importance of nature and biodiversity for human economic activity.
Klaudia Prodani is a PhD candidate at the Department of Science, Technology and Policy Studies of the University of Twente. Her research interest focus on the performativity of biodiversity models in sustainable finance.
Mathilde Salin is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Centre for International Research on Environment and Development (CIRED) of AgroParisTech, Paris-Saclay University. Specialized in environmental economics and prospective modeling, her research focuses on the macro-financial consequences of economic transformations linked to biodiversity protection, and in particular on the levers of action of central banks for attenuating transition risks.
Information and registration
Date: Friday March 29, 2024, 11 am -1 pm
Venue: Mines Paris-PSL, 60 boulevard Saint Michel, 75006 Paris. Room tbc.
The seminar is held in English.
The session will also be streamed by videoconference. The link will be sent upon registration just before the seminar.
The seminar is open to all. Please register here to participate in this session.
Contact: Béatrice Cointe, Kewan Mertens or Alexandre Violle
Find out more about the program
Photo sources: Klaudia Prodani, IPBES. Mathilde Salin, CIRED.