A new Danish project aims to translate biodiversity into economic numbers, hoping to shift policy debates from ethics to kroner. But with no national strategy in place and deep disagreements over whether nature should be priced at all, the real question is whether spreadsheets can succeed where decades of science have failed.
Denmark is gearing up to put a price tag on its beleaguered nature. A project led by climate think tank Concito and marine policy group Tænketanken Hav will attempt to quantify the economic value of improved biodiversity, both on land and at sea. The goal is to arm politicians with hard numbers in time for Denmark’s long awaited biodiversity law.
The Push for Economic Arguments
As noted by Concito senior consultant Tage Duer, biodiversity action should be seen as an investment rather than a cost. He argues that more space for nature delivers reduced greenhouse gas emissions, more resilient food production, better climate adaptation and improved public health. According to Duer, all these benefits need to be made clearer to the Danish public and politicians.
The project, backed by 15. Juni Fonden, will run from May through September this year. It comes at a moment when Denmark officially has no valid national biodiversity strategy in force, according to Statistics Denmark. The previous strategy expired and a revised version is still being drafted, leaving the country in a policy vacuum just as EU and global biodiversity commitments demand concrete, measurable action.
A Landscape in Transition
The timing matters because Denmark is already embarked on what the government calls the biggest landscape change in over a century. Plans include planting one billion trees, adding roughly 250,000 hectares of forest and converting around 140,000 hectares of low lying farmland into nature over two decades. The bill is approximately 43 billion kroner in public money.
Choosing which areas to prioritize, and how to weigh biodiversity gains against agricultural output, requires precisely the kind of cost benefit framework Concito hopes to provide. Tænketanken Hav program chief Mathilde Mammen emphasizes that the project will also examine local economic impacts, including potential revenue from nature tourism and fishing experiences. She points to Danish and foreign examples where people are willing to pay for quality nature access.
International Pressure and Corporate Demand
Denmark is under mounting pressure from Brussels and beyond to integrate biodiversity into policy and accounts. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 sets targets of 30 percent protected land and 10 percent strictly protected. New EU corporate reporting rules will soon require larger Danish companies to disclose biodiversity impacts and risks in management reports.
A Danish Biodiversity Partnership launched in 2023, involving 22 organizations from industry and civil society, has already issued guidance on how businesses can measure their nature footprint. The partnership explicitly frames valuation tools as necessary to help companies comply with emerging regulations and justify investments in nature positive initiatives.
The Skeptics Push Back
Not everyone is convinced that putting kroner on nature is the right path. Environmental groups such as Forests of the World are campaigning for a binding biodiversity law with hard area based targets, modeled on Denmark’s Climate Act. They argue that at least 30 percent of Danish land should be protected nature by 2045, with 10 percent strictly protected by 2040.
For these advocates, legal obligations matter more than economic models. They worry that valuation exercises risk reducing complex ecosystems to spreadsheet entries, privileging easily measured services like carbon storage while ignoring intrinsic and cultural values. Academics working on the philosophy and sociology of biodiversity have raised similar concerns, warning that monetary approaches can obscure ethical duties and lead to bad trade offs.
Missing Data, Big Promises
There is also a practical problem. Denmark still lacks comprehensive data on species distribution and ecosystem condition, especially across its intensively farmed landscapes. Statistics Denmark marks the country’s progress on integrating biodiversity into planning and accounts as officially “in development.” Any economic valuation will rest on incomplete information and model based assumptions.
I have watched Denmark wrestle with biodiversity policy for years, and the pattern is familiar. Strong institutions, ambitious rhetoric, disappointing results on the ground. The hope now is that economic arguments will break the logjam where scientific warnings have not. But turning wetlands and forests into balance sheet assets carries its own risks, especially if the numbers are used to justify weak protection or greenwash harmful projects.
The Concito project may provide useful decision support. It may also reveal uncomfortable truths about how little biodiversity Denmark has left to value. Either way, the results will land in the middle of a political fight over whether Denmark’s nature crisis requires hard law or clever incentives. September will tell us which argument the numbers favor.
Sources and References
Concito: Nyt projekt skal sætte tal på værdien af mere og bedre biodiversitet i Danmark
The Danish Dream: Denmark
