Enabling transformative economic change in the
post-2020 biodiversity agenda
Esther Turnhout, Pamela Mcelwee, Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, Jennifer
Clapp, Cindy Isenhour, Eszter Kelemen, Tim Jackson, Daniel Miller, Graciela
Rusch, Joachim Spangenberg, et al.
To cite this version:
Esther Turnhout, Pamela Mcelwee, Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, Jennifer Clapp, Cindy Isenhour, et
al.. Enabling transformative economic change in the post-2020 biodiversity agenda. Conservation
Letters, Wiley, 2021, 14 (4), pp.e12805. 10.1111/conl.12805. halshs-03216191
HAL Id: halshs-03216191
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03216191
Submitted on 3 May 2021
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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License
Received: 28 November 2020
Revised: 15 March 2021
Accepted: 5 April 2021
DOI: 10.1111/conl.12805
POLICY PERSPECTIVE
Enabling transformative economic change in the post-2020
biodiversity agenda
Esther Turnhout1
Jennifer Clapp4
Pamela McElwee2
Cindy Isenhour5
Eszter Kelemen6,7
Daniel C. Miller9
Graciela M. Rusch10
Anthony Waldron12,13
1
Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline3
Tim Jackson8
Joachim H. Spangenberg11
Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands
2
Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
3
Paris School of Economics, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France
4
School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
5
Department of Anthropology/Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA
6
Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG), Budapest, Hungary
7
Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Sociology, Budapest, Hungary
8
Center for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK
9
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
10
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Trondheim, Norway
11
Sustainable Europe Research Institute SERI Germany, Cologne, Germany
12
Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
13
The Working Ant, Cambridge, UK
Correspondence
Esther Turnhout, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University,
PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, the
Netherlands.
Email: esther.turnhout@wur.nl
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on the global economy, and current delays
in the negotiation of the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity heighten the urgency to build back better for biodiversity, sustainability, and well-being. In 2019, the Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) concluded that
addressing biodiversity loss requires a transformative change of the global economic system. Drawing on the IPBES findings, this policy perspective discusses
actions in four priority areas to inform the post-2020 agenda: (1) Increasing funding for conservation; (2) redirecting incentives for sustainability; (3) creating an
enabling regulatory environment; and (4) reforming metrics to assess biodiversity impacts and progress toward sustainable and just goals. As the COVID-19
pandemic has made clear, and the negotiations for the post-2020 agenda have
emphasized, governments are indispensable in guiding economic systems and
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
© 2021 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals LLC
Conservation Letters. 2021;e12805.
https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12805
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/conl
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TURNHOUT ET AL.
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must take an active role in transformations, along with businesses and civil society. These key actors must work together to implement actions that combine
short-term impacts with structural change to shift economic systems away from
a fixation with growth toward human and ecological well-being. The four priority areas discussed here provide opportunities for the post-2020 agenda to do
so.
KEYWORDS
biodiversity conservation, economic systems, green finance, incentives, metrics, policy, regulation, subsidies, trade, transformative change
1
INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed discussions on the
post-2020 biodiversity agenda, with the 15th Conference of
the Parties (CoP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity
now delayed to the end of 2021. The current “zero draft” of
the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (CBD, 2020a),
which will be negotiated at the CoP, draws on the 2019
Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services Global Assessment (IPBES, 2019) in recognizing the importance of transformative change to safeguard
nature and its contributions to people. For example, the
draft notes that “urgent policy action globally, regionally,
and nationally is required to transform economic, social
and financial models so that the trends that have exacerbated biodiversity loss will stabilize in the next 10 years.”
(CBD, 2020a, p. 2) Yet it remains vague with regard to
how such transformations might be achieved. Moreover,
although it identifies a number of goals and targets related
to economics and biodiversity funding, it fails to specify a
coherent strategy to transform underlying economic and
financial systems and structures that drive the destruction
of biodiversity (CBD, 2020a).
A specific, actionable strategy is urgently needed since
the drivers of biodiversity loss have grown dramatically
in the past decades and are only expected to increase in
scope and intensity (IPBES, 2019). Our current economic
system has achieved a quadrupling of global GDP over the
past 50 years (Otero et al., 2020). However, this remarkable growth has come at the cost of widespread biodiversity loss and marked increases in greenhouse emissions
(IPBES, 2019; Otero et al., 2020), while simultaneously generating a highly unequal distribution of benefits (Jackson,
2017). These changes threaten not only nature and human
well-being but also future economic prosperity, leading the
World Economic Forum to rank environmental and biodiversity degradation in the top five global economic risks
today, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (WEF, 2020).
The business community is increasingly recognizing the
threat posed by degradation of nature, including loss of
pollinators, depleted water supplies, and increased risks of
natural disasters.
The COVID-19 crisis provides further impetus to rethink
the draft post-2020 biodiversity framework and prioritize
strategic actions leading to transformative change in the
way our economies and governance systems work. The
COVID-19 crisis has shown in stark relief that financial
and market tools, regulation, and voluntary measures must
be used together, not separately. Governments have used
financial stimuli to keep the economy from collapsing
and to support those made jobless, and they have put
in place regulations to spur behavioral change since voluntary actions, such as mask-wearing, alone proved to
be insufficient. COVID-19 also clearly demonstrated how
individual decision-making is structured by both government and market forces together, which affected among
others the capacity of individuals to follow stay-at-home
orders. Preventing potentially catastrophic outcomes from
biodiversity loss will require the same approach: A recognition that the economy is the result of public institutions and the market working in tandem; that individual
actions are embedded within these structural factors; and
therefore, that promoting pro-biodiversity actions requires
the transformation of those structural factors to create an
appropriate enabling environment.
The integrated approach needed to improve biodiversity and climate outcomes will require radically changing the current imbalance between policies and market demands that promote biodiversity-damaging activities and those that promote biodiversity-conserving and
enhancing activities. Yet, recognition of these critical interactions among governments, markets, and individuals–
and related actions to address them–is largely absent in the
current zero draft’s theory of change.
Here, we draw on the results of the IPBES global assessment to identify actions that can enable transformative
change in national and global economic systems. We identify four priority areas for these actions: (1) Increasing
TURNHOUT ET AL.
capital investment in nature conservation and biodiversityenhancing production; (2) redirecting economic incentives away from damaging activities and towards natureenhancing actions; (3) creating enabling regulatory frameworks to ensure the effectiveness of increased investments
and realigned incentives; and (4) reforming metrics to
measure, value, and catalyze these transformative shifts
and their impacts on human and ecological well-being.
Although these four priority areas involve actions that have
been proposed previously, we foreground the need for a
more holistic strategy that combines concrete measures
with structural changes. Profound transformative change
will only be possible with the market, state, and civil society actors working together on these priority areas simultaneously.
INCREASED FINANCING FOR
2
CONSERVATION
Finance (capital investment) is the first economic requirement of both productive enterprises and biodiversity conservation. In contrast to the ambitions articulated in Aichi
Target 20, and in the zero draft Target 18 goals currently
in discussion, the finance committed to public-goods-style
biodiversity conservation (e.g., protected areas) is highly
inadequate, leading to biodiversity loss through simple
ineffectiveness (Coad et al., 2019; Waldron et al., 2020).
The financing needed for post-2020 biodiversity agendas is
at least $151 billion annually and may be as high as $895 billion annually (CBD, 2020b). An earlier forensic analysis of
biodiversity spending found that annual conservation budgets were approximately $21.5 billion up to 2008 (Waldron
et al., 2013). Post-2008 spending estimates have used different measures, making comparison difficult, but even so, a
brief analysis suggests that spending has likely remained
largely flat since 2008 (the 2015 total was 2% higher than
the 2008 one, not accounting for inflation; CBD, 2020b).
Funding for biodiversity in low- and middle-income
countries (where the vast majority of globally important
biodiversity is found) also requires strong support from
international aid (Waldron et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2013)
but average aid to biodiversity for 2013 to 2017 was $6.3
billion per year, representing just 0.01% of the OECD’s
GDP of $47,124 billion (OECD, 2020). Both domestic and
international investment in conservation, therefore, needs
to increase as part of the post-2020 framework.
Yet increasing funding for biodiversity alone is
insufficient. Finance also needs to move away from
biodiversity-harming industries such as fossil fuels (which
are increasingly recognized to represent a capital risk)
towards environmentally beneficial activities. The increasingly common requirement for loan recipients to comply
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with Equator Principles on minimizing environmental
and social impact as a condition of receiving capital
investment is an example of such a transition already
underway (Equator Principles Association, 2020).
REFORMED ECONOMIC
3
INCENTIVES
Increasing pro-biodiversity incentives and reducing
biodiversity-harming incentives will also be needed to
transform processes of production themselves. For example, government subsidies for sectors such as fossil fuel
production and use, fisheries, and agriculture are estimated to be at least half a trillion dollars globally (OECD,
2019). Redirecting those subsidies so that they support
economies and biodiversity simultaneously (rather than
supporting economies to the detriment of biodiversity) is
a major step towards reducing the drivers of biodiversity
loss. Such proposals have been part of international agreements for decades, and they are also included in the post2020 framework draft (Target 17; CBD, 2020a). However,
they have met with resistance from vested interests and
have received little follow-up in implementation (Dempsey
et al., 2020). The zero draft must therefore clearly identify
how vested interests will be addressed to make progress
on subsidy reform. Governments will need to act and
coordinate with relevant private sector actors to remove
unsustainable incentives and promote the necessary
transition, while carefully managing power inequalities,
ensuring inclusiveness, and mitigating short-term equity
impacts on vulnerable groups. Governments can also
use their considerable leverage to increase taxes or fines
on biodiversity-damaging enterprises (and reduce them
on biodiversity-protecting ones). They may, for example,
target current international tax havens, which have
expanded in recent years and have contributed to illegal
fishing and destructive cattle ranching (Galaz et al., 2018).
It is vital to align incentives within financial markets in
such a way as to encourage the protection of (and investment in) biodiversity and to discourage its degradation.
Initiatives such as green bonds, risk-related financial disclosures, and the alignment of executive remuneration
with long-term environmental performance are rapidly
becoming part of the architecture of financial reform (Jackson & Molho, 2018). Other tools to disincentivize biodiversity loss have included payments for ecosystem services
schemes, including reduced emissions from deforestation
and degradation schemes. To date, however, such payments have often proved too small to compete with alternative, biodiversity-harming forms of land use (Börner
et al., 2017). Similarly, voluntary certification and labeling initiatives that attempt to create a price premium for
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pro-biodiversity production by nudging demand (consumer behavior), have yielded mixed results (Morgans
et al., 2018). A key reason for this limited success is that
these initiatives are embedded in economic and institutional structures maintained by powerful special interest
groups that prioritize economic growth over biodiversity
concerns (Bartley, 2021). Thus, any change in incentives or
nudges must be accompanied by efforts to address these
political and economic interests, ensuring that the economic system reflects broader social values, including the
value of protecting the future of the planet.
4
EXPANDED REGULATION OF
BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL SECTORS
The scope for private actors and businesses to transform
their systems is determined by and embedded in larger
structures. For example, many farmers are locked into
large-scale resource-intensive monocultures by contractual obligation with agricultural suppliers and retailers or
with investors and lenders, constraining their ability to
adopt more sustainable practices (Oliveira & Hecht, 2016;
Phelina & Choumert, 2017). Government action is indispensable to balance these large-scale forces and structures,
reduce barriers for change, and catalyze sustainable and
pro-biodiversity actions. Such measures should involve
regulatory reform to ensure higher minimum standards for
environmental, biodiversity, and social justice, and equity
objectives. While some governments have taken on “no
net loss” pledges for biodiversity, the regulatory apparatus for these promises has fallen short, whether in permit procedures, impact assessments, or market incentives
(Maron et al., 2018). At the international level, trade and
investment are major factors affecting biodiversity, and
current global supply chain arrangements often encourage
unsustainable sourcing or overproduction (Clapp & Isakson, 2018). Reforming these agreements and establishing
green procurement policies, which include sustainability
and biodiversity standards and certification schemes, can
be powerful ways to promote pro-biodiversity production
and trade (Lindström et al., 2020), although at present such
measures remain weak (Dauvergne, 2018).
Regulation is also needed to reduce negative ecological
impacts of the financial sector, including banks, pension
funds, private equity, and insurance companies (Davis
et al., 2020). The increased financialization of a wide array
of operations related to agriculture, forestry, and mining,
using speculative financial instruments such as commodity index funds, futures markets, and nature-based
derivatives, has created financial incentives for unsustainable resource use and production and has also been
implicated in price instability and market volatility, often
TURNHOUT ET AL.
with negative environmental and social effects (Clapp &
Isakson, 2018; Tadesse et al., 2014). This regulation of the
financial sector also has economic co-benefits: Reducing
systemic risks in the supply and trade of essential products
(such as food and energy) enhances the resilience of social
and economic systems. Regulation can also ensure that
financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies, take biodiversity into account when they assess the
value of their assets and the risks of planned investments.
An important step in this direction was recently taken
in EU financial regulation, which offers a classification
system allowing businesses and investors to identify
what economic activities can be considered sustainable,
and thus discouraging greenwashing and encouraging
the redirection of financial flows towards sustainability.
Central banks can also play a key role in ensuring that biodiversity is taken into account in the decisions of financial
intermediaries since they have at their disposal powerful
levers such as the orientation of credit through monetary
policy and the reshaping of more stringent financial
regulations, including disclosures and reporting (EU
High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance, 2019).
NEW METRICS FOR ECONOMIC
5
AND BUSINESS PRACTICES
Transformative change will require more than the specific policy changes described above; deeper and structural changes in values and institutions are also needed.
In turn, such structural changes can reinforce and accelerate further reforms in regulation and incentives, resulting in positive feedback loops. Changing metrics is a wellrecognized strategy for effecting structural change in values and paradigms: By better measuring what we value,
changes in values can be reflected in and catalyzed by
changes in metrics (Stiglitz et al., 2009). We note that
the post-2020 framework pays no attention to the need
for reformed metrics or measures in any existing targets, thereby missing an important opportunity to catalyze
transformative change (CBD, 2020a).
One prominent approach is physical or monetary natural capital accounting, which aims to include stocks
and flows of environmental and biodiversity assets in
accounting systems. Current efforts focus on the inclusion of biodiversity in corporate accounting as well as in
national and EU-level accounts. These approaches can
potentially provide much needed information about biodiversity impacts (Hein et al., 2020), and in so doing, they can
contribute to enhanced sustainability and public accountability. However, for reasons related to the scope of the metrics as well as the disclosure of information, current initiatives fall short of delivering on these objectives, with a
TURNHOUT ET AL.
potential risk that they will contribute to greenwashing
and that they will stall rather than catalyze transformation (Helm, 2019). The EU has taken regulatory action on
this front as part of its Green Deal, and it has taken the
initiative to review its non-financial disclosure directive
and to broaden its scope and quality by adding biodiversity
metrics, and there are also other related initiatives, including the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosure,
and the Partnership for Biodiversity Financing Accounting. However, considerable research and implementation
gaps remain. The lack of systematic information about biodiversity hampers the ability of governments, investors,
and citizens to evaluate the biodiversity impacts of policy
and private actions and monitor progress, and this negatively affects the accountability and legitimacy of governments and businesses (IPBES, 2019).
To address the limitations of growth as the objective
of economic policy and of GDP as a measure (Stiglitz
et al., 2009) countries can adopt new integrated metrics
for social progress that include a broad perspective on ecological and social well-being. Several countries, including Bhutan, New Zealand, and Iceland have adopted or
are developing such national metrics and indicators that
encompass aspects related to biodiversity such as mental
and physical health, living environment, and nature. A
notable recent example is China’s gross ecosystem product, which is meant to complement GDP to inform public policy decisions (Ouyang et al., 2020). The emerging
movement around Doughnut Economics (Raworth, 2017)
offers proposals to expand metrics to include unmonetized
goods and services and natural and social assets and debts
(instead of only transactions), and disaggregate metrics so
that they demonstrate the (in)equities involved in the distribution of benefits and burdens of economic activities
across different social groups.
A third action to reform metrics refers to the assessment
of transformative change. Since transformative change will
affect existing interests and livelihoods, we need metrics that can monitor progress and keep a check on the
equitable distribution of benefits and burdens of transformation, including early warnings for unintended and
unexpected outcomes. Such metrics must be informed by
insights not only from economics and the natural sciences
but also from other social sciences, law, and the humanities
given the centrality of human perceptions of the economy
and well-being.
6
TRANSFORMING ECONOMIC
SYSTEMS
Transformative change of our societies and economies is
urgent not only for biodiversity but also to address cli-
5 of 8
mate change and achieve sustainable development goals.
Governments play an indispensable role in fostering these
required transformations. Governments historically have
been promoters of economic development (Mazzucato,
2011)–a role that will no doubt increase in the immediate post-COVID-19 future– and they must take this role
to collaborate with private actors to ensure that economic
systems and activities are compatible with biodiversity.
Markets in turn can provide the signals about what risks
investors and consumers are unwilling to take, helping to
guide government regulations to needed areas.
Effecting transformative change will require an
approach that combines tangible policy measures with
structural changes in values and institutions. The reforms
in metrics, regulation, incentives, and investment highlighted here are interdependent and will need to be
addressed in tandem. For example, financing for conservation will only make a difference if drivers of biodiversity
loss are also reversed; reformed metrics can only be a
game-changer if they are made actionable through incentive systems; and incentive systems can only be effective if
they are embedded in an enabling regulatory environment.
Taken together, actions on these fronts can catalyze profound changes in institutions and values that further catalyze the transformation of economic systems (Figure 1).
What such a transformed economic system looks like is
the subject of much debate and conceptual ideas for circular, steady state, and green economies have been proposed
(Jackson, 2017; Jackson & Victor, 2019; Raworth, 2017).
Guided by values for just and fair economies, we need
to consider what levels of consumption are sustainable
and how a more equitable distribution of resources can be
achieved (Gough, 2017). Since effective decoupling of economic growth from resource use has not yet been demonstrated, reductions in the scale and scope of the economy
towards zero growth or degrowth, including physical limits on some forms of production and consumption, seem
inevitable to many (O’Neill et al., 2018; IPBES, 2019; Parrique et al., 2019). Respecting ecological limits need not
mean compromising human or planetary wellbeing, particularly if measures taken are just and equitable and if
they effectively address excess wealth and consumption
(Otto et al., 2019; Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020).
Given the inherently non-linear and unpredictable character of these transformations, a blueprint or recipe with
clearly defined endpoints is neither possible nor desirable.
Instead, an inclusive and integrated approach is needed
that accounts for complexity and uncertainty while tracking progress, impacts, and trade-offs. The design, implementation, and monitoring of strategies and actions for
transformative change will require substantial research
effort and support by the scientific community, including
funding organizations.
TURNHOUT ET AL.
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F I G U R E 1 Action across four priority areas can affect values and institutions, address the drivers of biodiversity loss, and catalyze the
transformative change needed to achieve the 2050 biodiversity vision.
7
CONCLUSION
After COVID-19, revitalizing past unsustainable economic
and ecological development trajectories is no longer an
option. Reforming investments, incentives, regulations,
and metrics provide a starting point for an integrated pathway to transform economic and financial systems. A coherent strategy is now needed that combines actions with
short-term positive impacts such as redirecting subsidies,
with those that will facilitate deeper structural transformation such as the introduction of new metrics. This multitiered approach is needed to scale up the changes resulting
from these short-term actions and leverage them for wider
transformation (McElwee et al., 2020). While the post-2020
framework suggests measures to reduce threats to biodiversity and encourage sustainable use and benefits from
nature, it lacks a coherent strategy to deal with economic
drivers of biodiversity loss and thus risks repeating the failures of the Aichi targets (CBD, 2020a). The actions and
priority areas identified here suggest a way forward that
avoids this outcome. In so doing, the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda can help support the urgent transformation of the economy that is needed to ensure human and
ecological well-being.
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
Pamela McElwee acknowledges the support of the Dean’s
biodiversity fund of the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers; Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline
acknowledges the support of the Agence Nationale de
la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-0001); Eszter Kelemen has
received support from the János Bolyai Research Grant
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Daniel Miller
acknowledges the support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Graciela M. Rusch acknowledges the support of the Norwegian Institute for Nature
Research (NINA) and the Norwegian Environmental
Agency; Cindy Isenhour acknowledges the support from
the National Science Foundation Convergence Program.
AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS
Writing and revision (lead), figure development: Esther
Turnhout. Writing and revision (co-lead), figure development: Pamela McElwee. Writing and revision: Mireille
Chiroleu-Assouline. Writing and revision: Jennifer Clapp.
Writing and revision: Cindy Isenhour. Writing and revision: Eszter Kelemen. Writing and revision: Tim Jackson.
Writing and revision: Graciela M. Rusch. Writing and revision: Joachim H. Spangenberg. Writing and revision, figure
development: Anthony Waldron. Writing and revision, figure development: Daniel C. Miller.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The authors conducted no data collection or scientific inquiry that required ethics considerations. The
manuscript complies with proper ethical scientific standards.
DATA ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT
This article draws on chapter 6, Section 4, including
supplementary materials, of the Global Assessment
of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The chapter can be
found here: https://www.ipbes.net/sites/default/files/
ipbes_global_assessment_chapter_6_unedited_31may.
TURNHOUT ET AL.
pdf. The supplementary materials of that chapter can be
found here: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-01/
GA_chapter_6_supplementary_materials.pdf
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
ORCID
Esther Turnhout https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-2076
Pamela McElwee https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3525-9285
Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline https://orcid.org/00000001-8810-4258
Eszter Kelemen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-1883
Daniel C. Miller https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6812-0314
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How to cite this article: Turnhout Esther,
McElwee Pamela, Chiroleu-Assouline Mireille,
Clapp Jennifer, Isenhour Cindy, Kelemen Eszter,
Jackson Tim, Miller Daniel C., Rusch Graciela M.,
Spangenberg Joachim H., Waldron Anthony.
Enabling transformative economic change in the
post-2020 biodiversity agenda. Conservation Letters.
2021;e12805. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12805