News

With Earth Day approaching, St. Olaf College Environmental Studies Department Chair Seth Binder answers questions about the role that biodiversity plays in thriving ecosystems, resilient communities, and economic stability. More importantly, he shares why Minnesotans should care and how individuals and policymakers can contribute to preserving Minnesota’s biodiversity. 

What is biodiversity, and what does it look like? 
When I think of biodiversity, I picture Minnesota’s remnant prairies in the summertime — thick with flowering plants of different colors, shapes, sizes, and teeming with busy insects. The notion of biodiversity captures all of this and more. It refers to the number and balance of different units of life, whether genes, species, or even entire ecosystems. The more numerous the different genes or species or ecosystems, and the more evenly represented they are, the more biodiverse the system. 

What are some challenges to having biodiverse environments?
Simplicity sells. It’s often difficult for us to imagine or manage more diverse and complex systems. We tend to prioritize a single use for any land areas and eliminate life that doesn’t seem to maximize that use. So we raze the prairie and plant the single most profitable crop. Or we clear woodlands for new housing developments, leaving only disconnected little squares of the most attractive grass species. Or we drain, fill, and pave over wetlands and leave no life at all. In some cases, we do this for lack of imagination. In other cases, for a lack of understanding of the benefits we forego when simplifying our environment. But in many cases, the key challenge is that there are real costs to sustaining greater diversity, and the people who face those costs often don’t get all or even most of the benefits. The disconnect between who bears the costs and who gets the benefits of biodiversity can explain a lot. Policies that help overcome that disconnect are really important.   

How does biodiversity benefit the average person?
The average person wouldn’t be alive without some amount of biodiversity, so I guess we should start there. A diverse array of species play critical roles in essential life-supporting functions, like creating the oxygen in the air we breathe or breaking down and recycling dead organic matter. We absolutely need some amount of biodiversity. More biodiversity generally means better functioning, more resilient ecosystems that we rely on for all sorts of benefits, such as maintaining a stable local climate, absorbing pollutants, or soaking up stormwater to mitigate erosion and floods. Exposure to nature — that is, to biodiverse environments — has important health and psychological benefits, too. As if that weren’t enough, we also learn from extraordinary species that have evolved traits that help us develop new pharmaceuticals or solutions to tough engineering problems. Finally, for many of us, the awe, wonder, and reverence that nature’s diversity inspires in us is priceless.   

How can Minnesotans contribute to encouraging biodiversity in their communities?
Biodiversity is a public good. The most important thing Minnesotans can do is continue to be informed, active voters. As voters, we recently approved an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution to extend the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund through 2050 — a big win for biodiversity at the ballot box. When the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment similarly comes up for renewal, that will be another important opportunity to ensure the protection and restoration of Minnesota’s biodiversity. Voting and being an active community member matter at the local level, too. Supporting investments in local parks helps carve out and maintain green spaces that can augment biodiversity, while supporting zoning laws and ordinances that promote densification helps relieve the economic pressure to convert natural lands to housing developments. Homeowners can take direct action to promote biodiversity by choosing to diversify their yards, planting rain gardens, and not applying harmful pesticides. 

How does your work at St. Olaf College support the research around biodiversity and economic health?
Some of my research has addressed the private, commercial benefits of agricultural biodiversity. The more that farmers perceive a benefit to themselves from more biodiverse agricultural landscapes, the more they’ll be willing to invest in it. That means more biodiversity with less burden on the government and taxpayers. Some of my other research focuses on how economists and regulators ought to take account of the less quantifiable (maybe unquantifiable) ‘existence value’ of biodiversity — that priceless awe, wonder, and reverence I mentioned earlier. How we account for that in our decision-making processes isn’t just a matter of economics; it’s about the health of our democracy.

Seth Binder is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College. He teaches courses on environmental economics, environmental policy and regulation, and sustainable development. Binder has written numerous scholarly publications regarding the economic value of biodiversity, including “Grassland biodiversity can pay” (2018), “Is Existence Value Appropriate for Regulatory Benefit-Cost Analysis?” (2020), and “Economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services” in The Ecological and Societal Consequences of Biodiversity Loss (2022).

For media inquiries, contact St. Olaf Director of Public Relations Kat Dodge at dodge2@stolaf.edu.