Nature-positive business operations can contribute to both business success and the environment, according to IPBES’ Business Biodiversity Assessment. Credit: iStock/IPBES

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe & MANCHESTER, United Kingdom, Feb 9 2026 (IPS)

Business can still remain profitable while protecting the environment but invest in nature-positive operations, says a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which finds that global companies have contributed to the escalating loss of biodiversity.

The IPBES Methodological Assessment Report on the Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People, known as the Business and Biodiversity Report, says global business has benefited from nature but has immensely contributed to the decline in biodiversity. It is time it changes how it does business because biodiversity decline is a “critical systemic risk threatening the economy, financial stability, and human well-being.”

The global economy, driven by business, is dependent on healthy biodiversity and nature for materials, climate regulation, clean water, and pollination. However, the current economic system treats nature as free and infinite, creating perverse incentives for its exploitation. Businesses are largely rewarded for short-term profit, even when their activities degrade the natural systems they rely on, creating a huge risk to the economy and society, the report said.

The cover of the Business and Biodiversity Report. Credit: IPBES

It Must Be Business Unusual Now

Approved at the recent 12th session of the IPBES Plenary, held in Manchester, United Kingdom, the report calls for the end of business as usual. Global businesses, heavily dependent on nature and impacted by nature, must quickly change their operations or face collapse.

“Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction… both of species in nature but potentially also their own,” noted the report.

Based on thousands of sources and prepared over three years by 79 leading experts from 35 countries from all regions of the world, the report is the first assessment of the impacts and dependencies of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

Current conditions perpetuate business as usual and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, said the report, pointing out that large subsidies that drive biodiversity losses are directed to business activities with the support of businesses and trade associations.

For example, in 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature were estimated at USD 7.3 trillion. Of this amount, private finance accounted for USD 4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies at about USD 2.4 trillion, the report said.

In contrast, USD 220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3 percent of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.

The new report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability, said Prof. Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the assessment, who highlighted that the loss of biodiversity was among the most serious threats to business.

“Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points,” Polasky said.

Polasky said during a press briefing today (February 9, 2026) that business can immediately act without waiting for governments to create an enabling environment. They can measure their impact and dependencies by increasing the efficiencies of their operation, reducing waste and understanding new business opportunities and products.

A 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by IPBES warned that one million species face extinction in the next few years as a result of overexploitation of resources, development, and other human activities, posing serious consequences for people and the planet.

Global business, which turns profits from nature, has contributed to the loss of biodiversity as a result of poor production practices that have poisoned river systems, emitted dangerous high greenhouse gases and led to land degradation. This is despite business being affected by natural disasters, from extreme weather floods and droughts to climate change.

The report is the latest assessment by IPBES, an independent intergovernmental body comprising more than 150 member governments. IPBES, often described as the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) for biodiversity, provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people.

IPBES Chair, David Oburo,  said the assessments done by IPBES are balanced by the knowledge systems needed to integrate information business and its impacts and dependencies on biodiversity.

He said there is a need to move away from the scientific language often used in talking about impacts and dependencies of businesses to simplifying it to be about risks and opportunities “so that the messaging that comes out from our assessments is really accessible to the audience that needs to access that information.”

The IPBES methodological assessment report warned that the current system was broken because what is profitable for businesses often results in loss of biodiversity.

A Peruvian indigenous Quechua woman weaving a textile with the traditional techniques in Cusco, Peru. The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Report suggests business should integrate Indigenous knowledge into their operations. Credit: iStock/IPBES

IPBES Executive Secretary, Luthando Dziba, said nature was everybody’s business. The conservation and restorative use of biodiversity is central to business success. Although businesses have contributed to innovations that have driven improvement of living standards, that same success had come at the cost of biodiversity.

An Enabling Environment Is Good for Biodiversity

The report offers a key solution of creating a new “enabling environment” where what is profitable for business aligns with what is good for biodiversity and society. Current conditions — laws, financial systems, corporate reporting rules, and cultural norms — do not reward businesses for protecting nature.

There are many barriers to protecting nature, such as the focus on short-term profits versus long-term ecological cycles. In addition, there is a lack of mandatory disclosure and accountability for environmental impacts, inadequate data, metrics, and capacity within the business community, as well as the failure to integrate Indigenous and local knowledge in biodiversity protection.

The creation of an enabling environment needs coordinated action policy and legal frameworks where governments should integrate biodiversity into all trade and sectoral policies. Besides, there is a need to redirect the USD 7.3 trillion in harmful flows using taxes, green bonds, and sustainability-linked loans to reward positive action.

Businesses must engage with Indigenous Peoples and local communities with Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), while access to and sharing of location-specific data on business activities and biodiversity should be improved.  Leverage technology such as remote sensing and artificial intelligence for better monitoring and traceability across business supply chains.

Measure It to Manage It

Another key finding of the report is that business could improve the measurement and management of its impacts and dependencies on nature through appropriate engagement with science and Indigenous and local knowledge.

Assessment co-chair Prof. Ximena Rueda noted that data and knowledge are often siloed, as scientific literature was not written for businesses. Besides, a lack of translation and attention to the needs of business has slowed uptake of scientific findings.

“Among business there is also often limited understanding and recognition of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as stewards of biodiversity and, therefore, holders of knowledge on its conservation, restoration and sustainable use,” said Rueda in a statement.

Industrial development threatens 60 percent of Indigenous lands around the world, and a quarter of all Indigenous territories are under high pressure from resource exploitation. However, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often find themselves inadequately represented in business research and decision-making, said the report.

Commenting on the report, Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), noted that while all businesses depend on nature, some were more exposed to risks stemming from resource depletion and environmental degradation. She said companies need a deeper understanding of the breadth of their dependencies and impacts on biodiversity to act better.

“In too many boardrooms and offices around the world, there is still a dearth of awareness of biodiversity protection as a business investment,” said Schomaker in a statement. “Too often, public policy still incentivises behaviour that drives biodiversity loss.”

While Alexander De Croo, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said too often biodiversity is an invisible and expendable asset on a balance sheet of global companies, but that was changing.

“Awareness is now accelerating of the risks to development if biodiversity fails—and of the economic opportunities and future prosperity that emerge where it thrives,” De Croo said.

The report underscored that we cannot business-as-usual our way out of the biodiversity crisis. Governments need to stop incentivising the destruction of biodiversity and start rewarding environmental stewardship. Besides, business leaders should now integrate natural capital accounting into their business strategy to disclose their environmental footprint while contributing to a positive global economy.

The evidence is clear: our economic prosperity is inextricably linked to nature’s health, and we are severing that vital link at our peril.

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David Oburo, IPBES Chair. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Feb 3 2026 (IPS)

British Monarch King Charles says science is the solution to protecting nature and halting global biodiversity loss, which is threatening humanity’s survival.

In a message to the 12th session of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which opened in Manchester, United Kingdom, this week, King Charles said nature is an important part of humanity but is under serious threat, which science can help tackle.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented, triple crisis of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution at a pace that far outstrips the planet’s ability to cope,” said King Charles in a message delivered by Emma Reynolds, United Kingdom Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Science is the Solution

“The best available science can help inform decisions and actions to steward nature and, most importantly, to restore it for future generations, “ King Charles noted, pointing out that humanity has the knowledge to reverse the existential crisis and transition towards an economy that prospers in harmony with nature.

Delegates representing the more than 150 IPBES member governments, observers, Indigenous Peoples,  local communities and scientists are meeting for the  IPBES’ 12th Session, expected to approve a landmark new IPBES Business & Biodiversity Assessment. The report,  a 3-year scientific assessment involving 80 expert authors from every region of the world, will become the accepted state of science on the impacts and dependencies of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. It will provide decision-makers with evidence and options for action to measure and better manage business relationships with nature.

The King lauded IPBES for bringing together the world’s leading scientists, indigenous and local knowledge, citizen science and government to share valuable knowledge through the Business and Biodiversity Report—the first of its kind.

“I pray with all my heart that it will help shape concrete action for years to come, including leveraging public and private finance to close by 2030 the annual global biodiversity gap of approximately USD 700 billion,” said King Charles.

IPBES Chair, Dr. David Obura, highlighted that the approval of the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment is important just days after the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Risks Report again spotlighted biodiversity loss as the second most urgent long-term risk to business around the world.

“In transitioning and transforming, businesses should all experience the rewards of being sustainable and vibrant, benefiting small and large,” Obura emphasized. “The Business Biodiversity assessment synthesizes the many tools and pathways available to do this and provides critical support for businesses across all countries to work with nature and people and not to work against either or both.”

Addressing the same delegates, Emma Reynolds,  UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, highlighted the urgency of collective action, the critical role of science, and the opportunities for business in nature.

Reynolds noted there was momentum around the world as countries were restoring wetlands and forests, communities were reviving degraded landscapes and businesses were increasingly investing in nature after realizing that nature delivers real returns.

“The tide for nature is beginning to turn, but we cannot afford to slow down,” said Reynolds. “The window to halt diversity loss by 2030 is narrowing. We need to build on that momentum, and we need to do it now.”

Multilateralism, a must for protecting nature

Paying tribute to IPBES for supporting scientific research, Reynolds emphasized that the rest of the world must step forward when others are stepping back from international cooperation. This is to demonstrate that protecting and restoring nature was not just an environmental necessity but essential for global security and the economy.

“The UK’s commitment to multilateralism remains steadfast,” she said. “We believe that by working together, sharing knowledge, aligning policies, and holding one another accountable, we can halt and reverse the diversity loss by 2030,.“

In January 2026, the United States withdrew its participation in IPBES, alongside 65  international organizations and bodies, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement.

The United States was a founding member of IPBES, and since its establishment in 2012, scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders—including Indigenous Peoples and local communities—from the United States have been among the most engaged contributors to its work.

The approval of the Business and Biodiversity Assessment by IPBES government members this week will be multilateralism in action, she said, noting that the assessment would not be possible without the critical role of science.

Reynolds underscored the need to base sound policy on solid scientific evidence. Decisions made in negotiating rooms and capitals around the world must be guided by the best and most up-to-date science available. IPBES  exists to provide exactly that.

Noting that the business depends on nature for raw materials, clean water, a stable climate, and food, Reynolds said companies that recognize their dependency on nature are proving that nature-positive investment works.

“Business as well as the government must act now to protect and restore nature… we have the science. We have the frameworks… What we need now is action.”

“Nature loss is now a systemic economic risk. That’s precisely why the assessment on business impact and dependencies is both urgent and necessary,” said  Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

“The first-ever business and diversity assessment will deliver authoritative evidence on how businesses depend on nature, how they impact it, and what that means for risk, for resilience, and for long-term value creation.”

Business and Biodiversity are linked

Underscoring that biodiversity loss is linked to the wider planetary crisis, Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, paid tribute to IPBES as a provider of science as a public good.

“IPBES has remained a  ‘beacon of knowledge at a time when science  and knowledge itself is under strain and when the voices of disinformation are sometimes louder than the facts,” said Schomaker, noting that ahead of the first global stocktake of progress in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), the science provided by IPBES would be invaluable.

“The Business and Biodiversity assessment constitutes a win for everyone. Clarifying that biodiversity loss isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a serious threat to economic systems, livelihoods, business profitability, and societal resilience. Biodiversity simply underpins and provides the stability we all need.”

Target 15 of the KMGBF, focuses on business reducing negative impacts on biodiversity and global businesses need to assess and disclose biodiversity-related impacts.

IPBES executive secretary, Dr. Luthando Dziba, said IPBES was on track to deliver, in the coming years, crucial knowledge and inspiration to support the implementation of current goals and targets of the KMGBF, and to provide the scientific foundation needed by the many processes now shaping the global agenda beyond 2030.

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Jewel City, a newly developed mixed-use precinct situated in the heart of the Johannesburg CBD is meant to create a safe, green and energetic place for people in the city. Credit: Gulshan Khan / Climate Visuals

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 3 2026 (IPS)

Our food, fuel, and fortunes come from nature, but as these resources are turned into profits, the balance between exploiting and replenishing the planet is ever more precarious.

Global businesses impact nature through mining, manufacturing, processing and retail operations. At the same time, nature impacts business operations because there is a loss of biodiversity and extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and high temperatures.

How global business is affecting nature and vice versa is the focus of a new assessment by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to be launched next week as part of the 12th session of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

IPBES is the global science-policy body tasked with providing the best-available evidence to decision-makers for people and nature. IPBES assessment reports respond directly to requests from governments and decision-makers, making them immediately relevant around the world.

The plenary session got underway earlier today (February 3, 2026) with a keynote address from Emma Reynolds, MP, UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and remarks by Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity; Kaveh Zahedi, FAO director of the Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment; IPBES chair Dr. David Obura; and IPBES executive secretary Dr. Luthando Dziba.

“This week you will work to agree on the business and biodiversity assessment; I pray with all my heart that it will help shape concrete action for years to come, including leveraging public and private sector finance,” King Charles said.

Reynolds sounded an optimistic note.

“Around the world, momentum is building. Countries are restoring wetlands and forests. Communities are reviving degraded landscapes. Businesses are discovering that investing in nature delivers real returns. The tide for nature is beginning to turn. But we cannot afford to slow down. The window to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 is narrowing. We need to build on that momentum—and we need to do it now. That is why platforms like IPBES matter more than ever. At a time when some are stepping back from international cooperation, the rest of us must step forward. Together we will demonstrate that protecting and restoring nature isn’t just an environmental necessity; it’s essential for our security, our economy, and our future.”

Obura said the plenary in Manchester was symbolic, as it had been at the forefront of historical and business transformation.

“This is especially important just days after the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Risks Report again spotlighted biodiversity loss as the second most urgent long-term risk to business around the world.”

Dziba said IPBES was on course.

“IPBES is therefore on track to deliver—over the coming years—crucial knowledge and inspiration to support the implementation of current goals and targets and to provide the scientific foundation needed by the many processes now shaping the global agenda beyond 2030.”

Professor Ximena Rueda-Fajardo, Co-chair of the BizBiodiversity Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The Business and Biodiversity Assessment report, the first of its kind, presents scientific evidence on how global business depends on and affects nature. Aimed at governments, businesses, financial institutions, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities, the assessment will provide key insights and options for businesses and financial institutions to derive better outcomes for biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

After three years of work by 80 of the world’s leading experts from science, the private sector, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities across 35 countries, the assessment will help promote business accountability and transparency while improving producer and consumer knowledge of their impacts and dependencies on nature. The Business and Biodiversity Assessment was completed in a shorter time than other IPBES assessments, which typically cover four years. It was completed in two years at a total cost of more than USD 1.5 million.

Why the Assessment on Business and Biodiversity?

The assessment comes at a time scientists are warning of a climate crisis, as we are off track to reducing carbon emissions and slow progress on phasing out fossil fuels. Global business has a complex link with nature, which provides resources that drive industry, yet nature  impacts global business too.

Speaking to IPBES’s Nature Insight Speed Dating with the Future podcast, co-chair of the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment, Professor Ximena Rueda Fajardo, says engaging with nature is not a business option but a necessity.

“Businesses are both beneficiaries of nature and major contributors to its decline—so they have a critical role in ensuring the wise stewardship of our environment,” says Fajardo, adding that, “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for more just and sustainable futures.”

IPBES highlights that over half of global GDP (USD 117 trillion of economic activity in 2025) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature.

Matt Jones, chief impact officer at the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre and co-chair of the report. Credit: Anastasia Rodopoulou ENB/IISD

Business and nature depend on each other. However, there are opposing views between those who advocate for nature and those involved in business on the relationship between the two. But science has found that there are interdependent linkages between nature and business.

More than half of the global economy is dependent on nature through the goods and services it provides, known as ecosystem services.

According to the World Economic Forum, biodiversity is shrinking faster than at any point in human history, and if left unchecked, up to 50 percent of all species may be lost by mid-century. In the last 50 years, land and sea-use change, climate change, natural resource use and exploitation, pollution and invasive alien species have been the major drivers of over 90 percent of the loss of biodiversity.

While it is difficult to quantify ecosystem services like food, medicines, clean air, disease control and climate regulation, they are estimated to be worth more than USD 150 trillion a year. Conservative estimates suggest that the loss of nature could cost the global economy at least USD 479 billion per year by 2050.

The Nature of Business Is Not Always Nature Friendly

Business operations have had a profound impact on nature, from pollution of the environment to waste and loss of biodiversity as a result of manufacturing and processing activities. What’s more, the current use of fossil fuels in powering industries has contributed to the rise in carbon emissions. Should businesses be adopting a new economic model that protects and preserves nature?

The rapid expansion of economic activity, without proper attention to its negative side effects, has taken its toll on nature, which in turn poses serious threats to business, IPBES found.

Engaging with nature is not optional for business but a necessity, says  Ximena Rueda, Co-chair of the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment Fajardo and Professor at the School of Management at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.

“Businesses are both beneficiaries of nature and major contributors to its decline—so they have a critical role in ensuring the wise stewardship of our environment,” says Fajardo, adding that, “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for more just and sustainable futures.”

A Map for Business To Impact Biodiversity and Nature

The IPBES methodological assessment of the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people is expected to be approved at the 12th session of the IPBES Plenary, which opened in Manchester, United Kingdom, this week.

According to IPBES, the assessment categorizes dependencies and impacts of businesses and financial institutions on biodiversity and  nature’s contributions to people. The assessment will further highlight collaborations needed between governments, the financial sector, consumers, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and civil society. It will also, through recommendations, strengthen efforts by businesses to achieve the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework by 2030 and the global vision of a world living in harmony with nature by 2050.

Expected Impacts

The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Report will provide critical information to governments, businesses and the financial sector to best measure the dependencies and impacts of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. It will also inform more integrated business and financial decisions and actions to simultaneously achieve the SDGs, the Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement

Matt Jones, chief impact officer at the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre and co-chair of the report, is convinced that there is no business that doesn’t depend on biodiversity. For example, do hairdressers depend on biodiversity?

“There are so many personal care products. There are so many things to do with shampoos that are derived from botanicals, which are derived from the natural world. A huge amount of their value chain is actually contingent on people being able to access products that are naturally derived. Think about it. You look at the adverts for these products. How often are they somebody in a waterfall or somebody in a forest… So even a hairdresser, where you go to get your haircut, absolutely depends on nature.”

Jones notes that the economic system encourages businesses to extract resources from nature. It is almost by default that business will have an impact on nature.

“As soon as you start talking about nature loss and the dependency that businesses have, the conversation changes,” he said. “What we found after people started understanding the risk to the business from nature loss was actually that the level of the conversation fundamentally changed. A business doesn’t just impact nature, but it depends on it.”

“And those interactions, they all create risk to the business if we see nature continuing to decline.”

Conservative estimates suggest that a collapse of essential ecosystem services, including pollination, marine fisheries and timber provision in native forests, could result in annual losses to the global GDP of USD 2.7 trillion by 2030. Similarly, biodiversity loss is believed to be costing the global economy 10 percent of its output annually.

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Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s eightieth session in 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider.

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 8 2026 (IPS)

President Donald Trump’s executive order to stop United States support for 66 international organizations, including 31 United Nations (UN) groups, has faced strong opposition from these organizations, the global community, humanitarian experts, and climate advocates, who are concerned about the negative effects on global cooperation, sustainable development, and international peace and security.

This executive order follows earlier withdrawals from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The United States has recently reduced its funding for foreign aid organizations.

The majority of the affected bodies in this executive order are organizations that center around issues in climate change, labor, peacekeeping, migration, and civic space conditions. In a statement from the U.S. Department of State, it is confirmed that Trump’s review of these organizations found them to be “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful.”

The executive order primarily affects organizations that address climate change, labor rights, peacekeeping, migration, and civic space conditions. In a statement, the department described the organizations, calling them vehicles for “progressive ideologies” funded by American taxpayers and misaligned with United States’ national interests.

“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” said United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “President Trump is clear: It is no longer acceptable to be sending these institutions the blood, sweat, and treasure of the American people, with little to nothing to show for it. The days of billions of dollars in taxpayer money flowing to foreign interests at the expense of our people are over.”

The order instructs all executive departments and agencies to begin implementing the withdrawals immediately. For the affected UN agencies, this entails ending United States participation and halting funding. Rubio also confirmed that the review of additional international organizations is still underway.

Humanitarian experts and spokespersons for many of the affected entities have voiced alarm and condemnation with President Trump’s order, warning of severe consequences for climate action, human rights, peacebuilding efforts, multilateral governance, and global crisis-response systems—particularly at a time of mounting international instability.

“Today, we are witnessing a complete shift from global cooperation towards transactional relations,” said Yamide Dagnet, Senior International Vice President at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“It is becoming less about shared principles, rule of law, and solidarity, thereby risking more global instability. By choosing to run away from addressing some of the biggest environmental, economic, health, and security threats on the planet, the United States of America stands to lose a lot. With diminishing credibility and competitiveness in the industries of the future, the United States will be missing out on job creation and innovation, ceding scientific and technological leadership to other countries,” Dagnet said.

She called on world leaders to commit to multilateralism.

“The world is bigger than the United States—and so are the solutions to our problems, which require global cooperation more than ever, including among states, provinces, and cities globally. This is the moment when world leaders need to resolutely commit to multilateral collaboration if we’re going to overcome these global threats to ensure a safe and sustainable future for all.”

Many have also criticized the United States’ à la carte approach to meeting its international obligations, only supporting the operations and agencies that align with President Trump’s priorities.

“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the United States approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,’” said Daniel Forti, the head of UN affairs at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms.”

The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) said it regretted “the deeply disappointing news of the United States’ intention to withdraw its participation in IPBES, along with more than 60 other international organizations and bodies.”

Dr. David Obura, Chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), said the U.S. was a founding member and “scientists, policymakers and stakeholders—including Indigenous Peoples and local communities—from the United States have been among the most engaged contributors to the work of IPBES since its establishment in 2012, making valuable contributions to objective science-based assessments of the state of the planet for people and nature.”

Apart from their contributions to IPBES, “decision-makers in the United States—at all levels and in all spheres of society—have also been among the most prolific users of the work produced by IPBES to help better inform policy, regulations, investments and future research.”

Obura thanked the United States for their contribution but noted that the withdrawal would have a massive impact on IPBES and the planet.

“Unfortunately, we cannot withdraw from the fact that more than 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction. Nor can we change the fact that the global economy is losing as much as USD 25 trillion per year in environmental impacts, or restore the missed opportunities of not acting now to generate more than USD 10 trillion in business opportunity value and 395 million jobs by 2030.”

Historically, the United States has been the largest financial contributor to the UN, providing approximately 22 percent of the organization’s regular budget and roughly 28 percent of all peacekeeping funds.

The withdrawal of United States support from 31 UN bodies is expected to trigger substantial budget shortfalls, cutbacks in humanitarian staffing, and the loss of critical technical expertise supplied by its personnel. These setbacks are likely to hinder progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), reduce food assistance and medical services for people in protracted crises, and embolden authoritarian governments to resist humanitarian oversight and intervention.

“The US decision to disengage from dozens of United Nations programs and agencies, along with other international bodies, is just President Trump’s latest assault on human rights protections and the global rule of law,” said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“Whether withdrawing from the Human Rights Council or defunding the UN Population Fund, which helps millions of women and girls around the world, this administration has been trying to destroy the very same human rights institutions that the US helped build over the last 80 years. UN member countries should resist the US campaign to demolish tools they use to uphold human rights and ensure that vital UN programs have the funding and political support they need.”

At a press briefing at the UN Headquarters, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, informed reporters of the UN’s reaction to the United States withdrawal, emphasizing that the UN remains committed to assisting people in need regardless of United States participation

“As we have consistently underscored, assessed contributions to the United Nations regular budget and peacekeeping budget, as approved by the General Assembly, are a legal obligation under the UN Charter for all Member States, including the United States,” said Dujarric.

“All United Nations entities will go on with the implementation of their mandates as given by Member States. The United Nations has a responsibility to deliver for those who depend on us.  We will continue to carry out our mandates with determination.”

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By Busani Bafana
PRETORIA, Dec 4 2025 (IPS)

Nature is a double-edged sword for global business. A groundbreaking report will reveal how businesses profit from exploiting natural resources while simultaneously impacting biodiversity.

An incisive scientific assessment, the Business and Biodiversity Report, set to be released by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) probes the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

Business and Biodiversity

This report, the first of its kind, examines the ways in which business benefits from nature and the ways in which global business operations impact nature. Representatives from 152 member governments are expected to approve it at the IPBES’ 12th Plenary session in the United Kingdom in February 2026.

Speaking at a media briefing ahead of the report launch, IPBES Executive Secretary Luthando Dziba said the assessment was commissioned by member governments for them to understand global business relationships with biodiversity. The report is to strengthen the knowledge to support the efforts of global businesses that are dependent on biodiversity and that also impact biodiversity.

“Biodiversity decline also represents a major risk for businesses,” Dziba said, highlighting that there are huge economic risks associated with biodiversity, whose loss is ranked among the top 10 global risks to business.

Dziba noted that the report is set to help businesses understand and measure how they depend on as well as how they impact biodiversity, which can determine actions they take to reduce their impacts on nature.

“Governments have an interest in understanding how other sectors impact biodiversity but also how they depend on biodiversity,” Dziba said. “Considering the unprecedented rates at which biodiversity is declining, this should hopefully be a wake-up call that presents significant risks, for instance, for businesses if biodiversity that they depend on is in such a dire state.”

Governments can design policies and regulations to create an enabling environment for companies to act sustainably by understanding how businesses benefit from and affect biodiversity, according to Dziba.

IPBES, an independent intergovernmental body established to strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services, had published several scientific assessments over the years. The assessments have provided policymakers with up-to-date knowledge on the current  situation and challenges relating to nature, biodiversity, and nature’s contributions to people.

Biodiversity Loss: a Loss to Business

IPBES’ seminal publication, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, released in 2019, found that 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, many within decades. Changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change pollution, and invasive alien species are the leading causes of changes in nature.

Nature provides several ecosystem services, like pollination, water purification, climate regulation, and raw materials for business, which make trillions of dollars in value globally. At the same time, global businesses have a negative impact on nature through mining, agriculture production, manufacturing, and gas and oil exploration.

The World Economic Forum has warned that 50 percent of the global economy is threatened by biodiversity loss, calling for a radical change from destructive human activity to a nature-positive economy.

The World Economic Forum’s New Nature Economy Report II, warns about the risks of destroying nature, stating that “USD 44 trillion of economic value generation—over half the world’s total GDP—is potentially at risk as a result of the dependence of business on nature and its services.”

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022 ranked biodiversity loss as the third most severe threat humanity will face in the next  decade.

In 2024, IPBES launched two reports that highlighted the importance of tackling the biodiversity crisis to unlock business and innovation opportunities. Swift action on protecting biodiversity could generate USD 10 trillion and support over 390 million jobs by 2030, according to IPBES. Failing to act on climate change adds at least USD 500 billion a year in more costs to achieving biodiversity goals.

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Dr. Luthando Dziba, Executive Secretary, IPBES in conversation with IPS. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 9 2025 (IPS)

Global biodiversity is disappearing at breakneck speed and, in the process, threatening the future of humanity. The loss is not a future threat but a present crisis that Dr. Luthando Dziba, the new Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), believes can be tackled with science-based policy action.

Dziba assumes his role at a pivotal moment. A landmark IPBES report, launched last December, had a stark warning: biodiversity decline is galloping, whipped by humanity’s disconnect from and dominance of nature, coupled with the inequitable concentration of power and wealth.

So, how does he envision IPBES turning the tide?

“IPBES is not a new platform,” Dziba explained. “It has built a strong tradition of co-producing knowledge with member states. We are now launching our second global biodiversity assessment, alongside critical work on monitoring and spatial planning. This isn’t just about producing reports; it’s about creating a social process for change.”

The “social process” is key to IPBES’s model. Member governments prioritize key biodiversity challenges that IPBES should focus on in its research and participate in the design of the assessments. Through continuous reviews and a collaborative scoping process, there is an integration between science and policy.

Prior to his appointment at IPBES, Dziba had a strong history of working in biodiversity in his native South Africa as well as internationally. He joined the South African National Parks (SANParks) in July 2017 as the Managing Executive for Conservation Services, which oversees Scientific Services, Veterinary Services, Conservation Planning and Cultural Heritage.

Biodiversity loss is accelerating and threatening global food security. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Before joining SANParks, Luthando managed the ecosystem services research area at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), leading a team of more than 50 researchers on biodiversity, ecosystem services, coastal systems, and earth observation.

Dziba has served as the co-chair of the Africa Regional Ecosystem Assessment, commissioned by IPBES and published in 2018. He has been an advisor to South Africa’s delegations at the IPBES plenaries, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Combating Science Skepticism

Beyond the well-documented drivers of biodiversity loss—pollution, unplanned development, and unsustainable consumption—Dziba identifies a greater emerging threat: the credibility of science itself.

“A growing challenge that we are going to have to confront is the question around the credibility of the science that underpins the work of IPBES,” Dziba told IPS in an exclusive interview. “We want to ensure that we continue to produce credible work, policy-relevant work but not policy-prescriptive work, which allows governments to take the knowledge and information that we produce to make policy-relevant decisions.”

Dziba, a veteran conservationist and thought leader, says IPBES has excelled in providing groundbreaking science assessment reports that have informed policy and decision-making on biodiversity conservation.

Established in 2012, IPBES unites over 145 member governments in providing independent, science-based assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Its mission is to deliver credible knowledge that informs policymakers and drives sustainable action.

Dziba identifies key threats, including unchecked human population growth, unplanned development, pollution, and consumption patterns to biodiversity. A critical challenge is maintaining the credibility of scientific work while producing policy-relevant—not policy-prescriptive—knowledge to empower governments to make informed decisions.

The First IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, launched in 2020, highlighted the need to integrate biodiversity considerations in global decision-making in all sectors because effective biodiversity conservation needed a multifaceted approach. The assessment noted alarming rates of habitat loss, particularly in tropical forests and coral reefs, and stressed that the overarching causes of biodiversity loss are closely linked to human resource use.

An IPBES report, Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control, found that more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. The report found that the global economic cost of invasive alien species exceeded USD 423 billion annually in 2019, with costs having at least quadrupled every decade since 1970.

The solution to global biodiversity loss, Dziba argued, is in transformative, “nexus” approaches that look at issues holistically.

“We need to take a nexus approach and not just tinker at the edges when we are facing problems but rather look at transformative ways of pushing meaningful solutions that bring about change,” he told IPS. “We believe that we will be able to shift towards issues that have an impact not just at a local scale but at a wider scale that are positive for biodiversity and the people.”

When asked how IPBES plans to affect global policy as biodiversity continues to decline, Dziba pointed out that they are currently working on assessments that improve understanding and monitoring related to global biodiversity plans.

“We co-produce knowledge with member states and experts, ensuring our assessments respond directly to policy needs,” he explained.

He stressed IPBES’s agility in tackling emerging challenges, pointing to expert analyses during the COVID pandemic of the links between biodiversity and pandemics, as well as integrating climate change considerations.

Only transformative solutions can reverse biodiversity loss and benefit people globally,” Dziba notes.

Yet there are promising models. He points to a compelling case from rural Senegal, where the scourge of bilharzia was tackled not just as a health issue but through a biodiversity lens. By addressing the pollution and invasive species that allowed the parasitic worms to thrive and using the cleared invasives for livestock feed, communities saw a 32 percent reduction of infection in children and improved livelihoods.

Africa’s conservation successes, such as saving the white rhino and protecting primate habitats through innovative community-based strategies, exemplify effective conservation shaped by combining science and local knowledge.

Dziba emphasizes IPBES’s unique collaborative process: governments engage actively from the outset in designing and reviewing assessments alongside experts, integrating both scientific and indigenous knowledge.

Weaving Local Wisdom

A cornerstone of IPBES’s credibility has been its pioneering effort to embed scientific knowledge with local and indigenous knowledge.

“We make a very deliberative effort to integrate indigenous and local knowledge right from the start,” Dziba said. The platform appoints knowledge holders as experts, holds dialogues, and has a specific taskforce to guide the process. This ensures that the assessments reflect an understanding of how ecosystems function and impact the communities.

Balancing economic development with biodiversity protection is a persistent challenge. While not a policymaker itself, IPBES supports governments by synthesizing evidence on sustainable management and conservation of ecosystems.

Looking ahead to enhancing global collaboration, Dziba said he is committed to strengthening partnerships with UN agencies and conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). These alliances are key to embedding IPBES’s scientific advice into international policy and action.

For Dziba, success during his tenure means delivering timely, high-quality assessments that decisively shape the post-2030 global biodiversity agenda. He also prioritizes securing IPBES’s financial sustainability through innovative funding, including engaging the private sector and philanthropic foundations—a critical strategy amid global economic uncertainty.

“It’s going to take more than just publishing an assessment,” he conceded. “It’s going to take an intentional strategy. Engaging businesses and philanthropies is not just about funding; it’s about recognizing the deep links between biodiversity and sustainable development.”

His ultimate goal is to ensure that when policymakers are asked about what they are doing to protect biodiversity, the answers are informed by the best possible science.

Dziba believes that, with the planet in peril, bridging science and policy is a lifeline to stop biodiversity loss and secure a sustainable future.

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Malagasy woman preparing fish on the beach of Lavanono in the far south of Madagascar. The IPBES Transformative Change Report suggests that principles of equity and justice; pluralism and inclusion; respectful and reciprocal human-nature relationships; and adaptive learning and action can achieve transformative change.

By Busani Bafana
WINDHOEK, Dec 19 2024 (IPS)

Nature is at a tipping point. With human activity having pushed up to 1 million plant and animal species close to extinction, securing sustainable development and halting global biodiversity collapse is no longer just an option but a requisite for human wellbeing.

A new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) clarifies that only transformative change can reverse the biodiversity crisis and reset humanity’s relationship with nature for just and sustainable futures.

The IPBES Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, also known as the Transformative Change Report, launched this week during the 11th IPBES Plenary session being held in Namibia, has a stark warning: biodiversity decline is galloping ahead, whipped up by humanity’s disconnect from and dominance over nature, coupled with the inequitable concentration of power and wealth. The prioritization of short-term individual and material gains, the report argues, has also led to the destruction of the fabric of life.

Change and Act Now

The report highlights the need for addressing biodiversity loss through what the authors describe as transformative change—fundamental systemwide shifts in views, including ways of thinking, knowing, and seeing; structures, such as ways of organizing, regulating, and governing; and practices, including ways of doing, behaving, and relating. According to the report, dominant worldviews, structures, and practices have played a significant role in accelerating biodiversity loss. The findings suggest that exploring alternative approaches could contribute to reducing biodiversity loss and achieving a more just and sustainable future.

Prof. Karen O’Brien (Norway/USA). Credit: Kiara Worth/IPBES

Prof. Arun Agrawal (India & USA). Credit: Kiara Worth/IPBES

Lucas Garibaldi (Argentina). Credit: Kiara Worth/IPBES

“Transformative change for a just and sustainable world is urgent,” says Karen O’Brien (Norway/USA), co-chair of the assessment with Arun Agrawal (India & USA) and Lucas Garibaldi (Argentina). “There is a closing window of opportunity to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and to prevent triggering the potentially irreversible decline and the projected collapse of key ecosystem functions,” she added.

O‘Brien cites that under current trends, there is a serious risk of crossing several irreversible biophysical tipping points, including die-off of low-altitude coral reefs, die-back of the Amazon rainforest, and loss of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

Justifying the urgency of transformative change, the report notes that past and current conservation approaches have failed to stop the loss of the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. The cost of inaction is high, the report warns.

The report estimates that the cost of addressing biodiversity loss and the decline of nature around the world could double if actions are delayed even by a decade. The report also examines potential opportunities for businesses and innovation through sustainable economic approaches, including nature-positive economies, ecological economies, and Mother-Earth-centric economies.

But the report offers hope. Implementing sustainable solutions to reverse biodiversity loss could generate business opportunities estimated at more than USD 10 trillion in business while supporting 395 million jobs globally by 2030, the report says, stating that transformative change can be created by everyone. In addition, governments can enable transformative change by fostering policies and regulations to benefit nature.

Meeting Sustainable and Biodiversity Goals

The report builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report, which found that the only way to achieve global development goals is through transformative change. The latest assessment, prepared over three years, was produced by more than 100 leading experts from 42 countries.

Agrawal says promoting and accelerating transformative change is essential to meeting the 23 action-oriented targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework by 2030 and for achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity.

“Transformative change is rarely the outcome of a single event, driver, or actor,” says Agrawal. “It is better understood as changes that each of us can create and multiple cascading shifts that trigger and reinforce one another, often in unexpected ways.”

While addressing the underlying causes of biodiversity loss is challenging as it is complex, it can be done, argues Garibaldi, co-chair of the assessment. He says a new transformation on the scale of the industrial revolution is needed—but one that conserves and restores the biodiversity of the planet rather than depleting it.

The cover of the Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. Credit: IPBES

Case studies of initiatives around the world with transformative potential show that positive outcomes for diverse economic and environmental indicators can happen in a decade or less.

The Transformative Change Report highlights that countries and people can advance deliberate transformative change for global sustainability by conserving places of value to people and nature that exemplify biocultural diversity. Furthermore, people can drive systematic change and mainstream biodiversity in the sectors most responsible for nature’s decline.

“The agriculture and livestock, fisheries, forestry, infrastructure and urban development, mining, and fossil fuel sectors contribute heavily to the worst outcomes for nature,” the report notes. “Transformative approaches such as multifunctional and regenerative land use can promote a variety of benefits for nature and people.”

Inclusivity Key to Nature Transformation

While researching the report, the authors assessed 850 separate “visions of a sustainable world for nature and people,” but found many did not challenge the status quo.

“The diversity of societies, economies, cultures, and peoples means that no single theory or approach provides a complete understanding of transformative change or how to achieve it,” said O’Brien. “Many knowledge systems, including Indigenous and local knowledge, provide complementary insights into how it occurs and how to promote, accelerate, and navigate the change needed for a just and sustainable world.”

At the launch, on Wednesday, December 18, Agrawal said every global problem is often, in essence, unfolding in local context, and what is seen as a global problem is closely and intimately connected to Indigenous knowledge relevant to a local context. He said, for example, adaptation efforts relevant in the Arctic would not be relevant in tropical forests, and emissions that are caused by what is happening in agriculture are not relevant to emissions caused by coal mines or large factories.

“All of these things that we consider as global problems, we need to think about the local particularity of the problem that gets aggregated into a global problem,” said Agrawal.

Coordinating lead author Rafael Calderon Contreras added that humanity was facing the most pressing and challenging crisis in history and that it was critical to learn from Indigenous communities on solutions to tackling the biodiversity crisis.

“What we found in our assessment is that we can learn from each other and that everyone has a role to play in achieving this vision of transformation that the assessment is pushing,” said Contreras.

Visions for living in harmony with nature are more likely to succeed when they emerge from inclusive, rights-based approaches and stakeholder processes and when they incorporate collaboration for change across sectors, the authors suggest.

Principles and Obstacles

The report says embracing the principles of equity and justice; pluralism and inclusion; respectful and reciprocal human-nature relationships; and adaptive learning and action can achieve transformative change.

“The impacts of actions and resources devoted to blocking transformative change, for example through lobbying by vested interest groups or corruption, currently overshadow those devoted to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity,” says O’Brien.

Garibaldi says studies have suggested that increasing biodiversity, protecting natural habitats, and reducing external inputs in agricultural landscapes can enhance crop productivity, for instance, by enhancing pollinator abundance and diversity.

Other strategies that can be used to advance transformative change include changing economic systems for nature and equity, for example, eliminating subsidies that contribute to biodiversity loss. Global public explicit subsidies to sectors driving nature’s decline ranged from USD 1.4 trillion to USD 3.3 trillion per year in 2022, and total public funding for environmentally harmful subsidies has increased by 55 percent since 2021.

It is estimated that between USD 722 billion and USD 967 billion per year is needed to manage biodiversity and maintain ecosystem integrity. Currently, USD 135 billion per year is spent on biodiversity conservation, leaving a biodiversity funding gap of up to USD 824 billion per year.

Transforming governance systems to be inclusive, accountable, and adaptive will promote transformation, the report says, noting that shifting societal views and values to recognize human-nature interconnectedness was strategic for the world to act with haste.

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IPBES’ nexus assessment concludes that environmental, social, and economic crises—such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks, and climate change—are all interconnected, and need interlinking solutions.

By Busani Bafana
WINDHOEK & BULAWAYO, Dec 17 2024 (IPS)

Biological diversity is on the decline worldwide, and current approaches to address its loss have been piecemeal and ineffective in tackling the crisis facing nature—this is despite estimates that over half of global GDP (USD 58 trillion of economic activity in 2023) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature, a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds.

The Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food, and Health—known as the Nexus Report—finds that biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change are connected crises.

Recognizing and leveraging the connections between biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change is the way to go about solving the crises, says the report approved at the 11th session of the IPBES Plenary being held in Namibia this week.

IPBES is a global science-policy body providing science evidence to decision-makers for people and nature.

The report, a product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries, finds that existing actions to address these crises fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance.

The front cover of the IPBES Nexus assessment report. Credit: IPBES

Integrated Solutions Needed

Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the assessment with Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA), highlighted that policymakers should decide and act beyond single-issue silos.

“Our current approaches to dealing with these crises have tended to be fragmented or siloed, and that’s led to inefficiencies and has often been counterproductive,” she says.

“If we try to address climate change, for example, by planting trees, we have to be really aware about what trees we are planting (to ensure they) are not actually making problems for biodiversity,” Harrison says, citing an often-implemented solution to reduce greenhouse gases.

Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the assessment report. Credit Kiara Worth/IPBES

Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA), co-chair of the assessment report. Credit: Kiara Worth/IPBES

Instead, the report offers response options, actions, or policies that can help advance governance and sustainable management of one or more elements of the nexus.

“What the report also offers is this suite of solutions. It stresses that we have over 70 response options available now that different actors can use in different context-dependent situations.”

The assessment also highlighted the unintended consequences when issues of nature are addressed in isolation.

For example, when the bat population in the United States declined due to a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, farmers increased their use of pesticides. This caused unintended health impacts, with an 8 percent rise in infant mortality reported in affected areas.

However, where a problem is tackled holistically, it can have positive impacts, as in bilharzia, a parasitic disease that affects more than 200 million people worldwide but is especially prevalent in Africa.

“Treated only as a health challenge—usually through medication—the problem often recurs as people are reinfected. An innovative project in rural Senegal took a different approach—reducing water pollution and removing invasive water plants to reduce the habitat for the snails that host the parasitic worms that carry the disease—resulting in a 32 percent reduction in infections in children, improved access to freshwater, and new revenue for the local communities,” says McElwee.

“The best way to bridge single-issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making. ‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated—moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals.”

The High Cost of Inaction

Warning of the high economic costs of inaction and the significant cost of biodiversity loss and climate change impacts, the report highlighted that biodiversity has been the loser in the tradeoffs where short-term gains are implemented and often neglect long-term sustainability.

“Policies informed by Nexus principles can create “win-win” solutions across sectors,” the report says.

According to the report, unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to tackling the multiple crises of biodiversity, water, health, food, and climate change are at least USD 10–25 trillion per year.

McElwee stressed that unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities worth about USD 1,7 trillion a year, have negative impacts on biodiversity. These subsidies have enhanced annual private sector financial flows estimated at USD 5.3 trillion, which are directly damaging to biodiversity.

“Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs—also increasing the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinction,” McElwee warned, emphasizing that delayed action on climate change adds at least USD 500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets.

The Nexus report, building on previous IPBES reports that identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss, states that indirect socioeconomic factors such as increasing waste, overconsumption, and population growth have intensified the direct drivers of biodiversity loss.

“Efforts of governments and other stakeholders have often failed to take into account indirect drivers and their impact on interactions between nexus elements because they remain fragmented, with many institutions working in isolation—often resulting in conflicting objectives, inefficiencies, and negative incentives, leading to unintended consequences,” says Harrison.

The IPBES Nexus assessment has recommended a shift to more integrated, inclusive, equitable, coordinated, and adaptive approaches as a solution to biodiversity loss.

Tapping Opportunities

The Nexus Report recommends a shift from the ‘business as usual’ approach to direct and indirect drivers of change, spelling doom for biodiversity, water quality, and human health. Furthermore, it warns that maximizing the outcomes for only one part of the nexus in isolation will result in negative outcomes for other nexus elements.

For example, a ‘food first’ approach prioritizes food production with positive benefits for nutritional health, arising from unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption. But this has negative impacts on biodiversity, water, and climate change.

“Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co-benefits across the nexus elements,” Harrison says. “The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Noting that current governance structures and approaches are not responsive enough to meet the interconnected challenges from the accelerated speed and scale of environmental change and rising inequalities, the report has recommended a shift to more integrated, inclusive, equitable, coordinated, and adaptive approaches.

The work of IPBES provides the science and evidence to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the Paris Agreement on climate change, says Harrison.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), commented that the IPBES Nexus Assessment is the first comprehensive global assessment that looks at the interlinkages between crises and identifies solutions.

“Biodiversity is vital to the efforts to meet humanity’s growing need for food, feed, fiber, and fuel while protecting the planet for future generations,” Andersen says. “We need to produce more with less, through the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life—leaving no one behind.”

While Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), added that actions to address global challenges affecting biodiversity, water, food, health, and the climate system are often taken without sufficient regard to the interlinkages between them. She says such actions result in shortcomings and adverse impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.

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The authors of this opinion article argue that nature’s economic contributions are often overlooked and business success should include stewardship of nature. Credit: Sergei Karakulov/Unsplash

By Stephen Polasky and Matt Jones
BONN, Dec 11 2024 (IPS)

Sustaining nature is not just an environmental goal—it is an essential component of sustainable business—and requires that we redefine business success to include the wise stewardship of nature.

Nature provides the vital infrastructure that underpins the economy. Nature’s contributions to people, through the economy, include the provision of raw materials necessary to produce everything from our food to components of our mobile phones, and the less immediately obvious but supremely important regulation of environmental conditions, which impact everything from climate and ocean conditions to water supplies and soil fertility.

Nature’s economic contributions, though vital, are often overlooked and undervalued. The rapid expansion of economic activity, without adequate attention to its negative side effects, has taken its toll on nature.

Prof. Stephen Polansky

The 2019 Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that nature is declining globally at rates that are unprecedented in human history. This decline has led to a rapid increase in species extinctions, climate change and—directly relevant to businesses—major declines in nature’s capacity to sustain contributions to the economy.

The sustained decline in nature’s contributions has become increasingly apparent as a risk to business and society. Critical changes to Earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages, and extreme weather events have been consistently rated by the World Economic Forum every year since the Global Assessment was published, among the top risks facing business over the next ten years. These risks were the top four risks of any kind in the most recent ranking.

Continuing with business as usual will only increase these risks and threaten the future success of business and long-term prosperity.

Smart businesses know they are facing a major challenge but often do not have clear plans for how to respond. Knowing what to do to halt and reverse the decline of nature requires solid understanding of the dependencies of business on nature, the ways in which nature supports business and economic activity, as well as the impacts of business on nature, both positive and negative. Most businesses currently lack data and robust tools to evaluate their dependencies and the full scale of their impacts on nature.

This gap has led to a rapid influx of not-for-profit initiatives and a burgeoning industry of private providers, all looking to deliver methods and metrics to help businesses measure their relationships with nature. Many of these efforts have been collaborative. But inevitably—as different approaches tackle different issues for different clients—there has been overlap and duplication alongside gaps and often conflicting advice. Businesses now frequently cite their confusion at the “acronym soup” of initiatives and methods as a major impediment to undertaking effective action.

Matt Jones

An authoritative global process, the IPBES Methodological Assessment of the Impact and Dependence of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People (the “Business and Biodiversity Assessment”), is currently reviewing the state of knowledge on business dependencies and impacts on nature. This first-of-its-kind assessment, informed by scientific research, Indigenous and local knowledge, and industry insights, will deliver a comprehensive review and provide guidance on the best tools and methods to assess business dependencies and impacts on nature. The assessment is expected to be finalized, and its results made public, in 2025.

Guidance will be tailored to fit different business contexts and scales of decision-making. The data and methods useful at the scale of an individual site, taking account of the details of business operations and ecological context at a specific location, differ from those useful for making decisions about value chains or setting corporate strategy. Financial institutions investing in a diverse portfolio of businesses need yet another set of data and analytic tools.

The Business and Biodiversity Assessment will provide recommendations on the appropriate use of data and methods across sites, value chains, corporate, and portfolio levels, helping businesses and financial institutions understand their dependencies and impacts on nature. Doing so will highlight both risks of further declines in nature and the opportunities for business to improve its relationship with nature.

While information is essential, it is not the only necessary element for successfully transforming the relationship between business and nature. Incentives also matter. Current conditions in which businesses operate do not encourage individual businesses to halt destruction or promote the recovery of nature. It is often more profitable for individual firms to continue harmful activities than it is to invest in environmentally beneficial activities.

Governments and the financial sector have a large role to play in reforming policy and investment strategies to better align business interests with larger societal interests of conserving and restoring nature. The Business and Biodiversity Assessment will also provide guidance on the positive roles that governments, the financial sector, and civil society can play in creating actionable pathways for businesses to be positive agents of change in promoting nature recovery.

Engaging with nature is no longer optional for businesses—it is a necessity. Businesses have a critical role in ensuring that global society moves away from continued destruction of nature and moves towards conservation and recovery of nature, which is essential for sustainable development and long-term prosperity.

Note: Prof. Stephen Polasky is Regents Professor and Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological and Environmental Economics at the University of Minnesota, specializing in the intersections of biodiversity, economics, and sustainability.

Matt Jones is Chief Impact Officer at the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), where his role is to empower the organisation to generate maximum positive impact for people and planet.

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Biodiversity is key to food security and nutrition. IPBES has warned that loss of biodiversity is accelerating around the world, with 1 million animal and plant species threatened with extinction. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Oct 11 2024 (IPS)

A holistic approach and transformative change of systems are needed to tackle biodiversity loss and to put the world on a sustainable path, an assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has recommended.

The world is facing an interconnected crisis of unprecedented biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and environmental degradation that can no longer be tackled through fragmented and piecemeal solutions, a forthcoming assessment by IPBES will show, calling for holistic approaches instead. 

IPBES is set to launch two scientific assessments, the  Nexus Assessment and Transformative Change Assessment, in December 2024, which recommend holistic solutions to tackling the connected and converging crises of biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change because’ “siloed” approaches are proving unsuccessful.’

In addition, the assessment calls for urgent “transformative change” by intergovernmental bodies, private sector organizations and civil society to respond to the nature and climate crises.

IPBES is an intergovernmental organization established to improve the interface between science and policy on issues of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The historic IPBES Global Assessment Report of 2019 found that meeting global sustainability targets for 2030 and beyond requires a fundamental, system-wide reorganization, including new paradigms.

IPBES Head of Communications, Rob Spaull, said the assessments represent the best science evidence for critical action to tackle biodiversity loss available to policymakers.

“This is the most ambitious science report we have done because these five issues by themselves are complex and this assessment  pulls them together,” Spaull said in a pre-report launch media briefing this week.

The Nexus Assessment identifies important trade-offs and opportunities within the multi-dimensional polycrisis: To what extent do efforts to address one crisis add to others? And which policy options and actions would produce the greatest benefits across the board? The report will offer an unprecedented range of responses to move decisions and actions beyond single-issue silos. The report was produced over three years by 101 experts in 42 countries.

“Global crises in biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change often intensify each other when addressed separately and should therefore be tackled together,” said Paula Harrison, co-chair of the IPBES Nexus Assessment report, in a statement.

“The Nexus Assessment is among the most ambitious work ever undertaken by the IPBES community, offering an unprecedented range of response options to move decisions and actions beyond single issue silos.”

The Transformative Change Assessment looks at the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, determinants of transformative change and options for achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. The report also assesses the determinants of transformative change, the biggest obstacles it faces and how it occurs. It also identifies achievable options to foster, accelerate and maintain transformative change towards a sustainable world and the steps to achieve global visions for transformative change.

A statement by IPBES notes that the Transformative Change Report will provide decision-makers, including policymakers, with “the best available evidence, analysis and options for actions leading to transformative change and build an understanding of the implications of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss for achieving the Paris Climate Agreement, global biodiversity targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and other major international development objectives.”

The 11th session of the IPBES Plenary, the first ever to take place in Africa from December 10 to 16, will discuss and approve the reports. IPBES represents nearly 150 governments and seeks to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Spaull said the assessments underline the need to find holistic solutions to addressing biodiversity loss.

“The assessments are looking at how when you try and fix one part of the system you have unintended consequences in other parts of the system; for instance, in many countries there is a big push to plant trees to mitigate climate change and for carbon sequestration and with (unintended) consequences for biodiversity. For example, planting one kind of tree may be damaging to the ecology or water supply and also have an impact on health, so it means there is a need to find a balance.”

He said the reports also highlight responding to issues simultaneously, which is also the emphasis on meeting the SDGs, which have to be addressed systematically rather than in silos.

“For example, there has been a big increase in the volume of food production in past decades and an increase in caloric output that has helped global health but on the other hand, this has resulted in biodiversity loss because the massive food production has been done through intensive agriculture methods that deplete water and have massive gas emissions,” said Spaull.

Furthermore, IPBES has influenced and shaped national and international biodiversity policy through providing policymakers with clear, scientifically based recommendations and helping governments make informed decisions about conservation, sustainable development, and environmental protection.

Through its assessments, IPBES highlights the interconnectedness of biodiversity, human health, economic stability, and environmental sustainability, making it a critical player in the global response to the biodiversity crisis.

Spaull noted that IPBES work has been instrumental in informing progress assessments on biodiversity-related SDGs.

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‘Nature Insights – Speed Dating with the Future’ aims to explain human connectedness and impact with nature. CREDIT: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Aug 29 2023 (IPS)

If you’ve ever heard that 1 million species are at risk of extinction and wondered what that means for you, your family, and your future – there’s a podcast you won’t want to miss.

Nature Insight: Speed Dating with the Future, produced by IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), tells the very human stories behind the science and policy of the global nature crisis, and its new third season starts today! 

Human activity is pushing other species off planet Earth at a rate never before seen in human history. One million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million species, are at risk of extinction, many within decades.

“We are now in what some scientists consider the Anthropocene – a geological era based on the impact of humans on Planet Earth. We have touched the Earth in ways that will seemingly last forever. With that comes our impact on every other species with which we share the Earth, millions upon millions of species, many of which we do not even know yet. While we might not see it all the time, we are deeply connected and rely heavily on these species for our own well-being. These are the many values of nature, and we have a great responsibility to preserve them,” says Brit Garner, Science Communicator and one of the two co-hosts of the podcast.

IPBES, often described as “the IPCC for biodiversity”, is an independent intergovernmental body. Its mandate is to compile the best available evidence on nature to inform decision-makers, and it brings together experts from around the world to create reports that are often thousands of pages long. But IPBES knows that not everyone will read a 1,000-page report, so the IPBES secretariat has found other ways of bringing biodiversity science to all kinds of decision-makers around the world.

Rob Spaull, the Head of Communications at IPBES, is the other co-host of the podcast. He tells IPS the podcast provides a platform and an opportunity for people from every corner of the world to peer into the “box of science and policy on nature”, to engage with complex issues that impact their daily lives, and to assess how their own choices and decisions impact nature and in return, how these choices affect nature’s capacity to meet their needs. Nature Insight seeks to engage with a wide variety of decision-makers in finance, business, health, and energy and to make clear our own interlinkages with nature and biodiversity.

Explaining the podcast’s title, Spaull says, “Every time you listen to Nature Insight, you are speed-dating with nature and with what the future may bring. Speed dating is about having a short time to communicate things that could change your life, and in this podcast, we try to do so by introducing listeners to people with unique insight into humanity’s relationship with nature.”

The podcast was started at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is now entering its third season, which will be available today, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday over the next five weeks on all the platforms where people usually engage with podcasts. Listeners should expect to meet incredible individuals whose experience can help people in every part of the global community to see solutions for the future of humans and nature but from different perspectives.

“From the great heights of the Himalayas to the farthest reaches of Antarctica, we have lined up a lot of exciting new topics and an array of experts to take us on these journeys together. In the first episode of our new season, we feature a mushroom scientist from Nepal who climbed Mount Everest and has been climbing the Himalayas in search of new species of fungi and mushrooms and for new discoveries for science, such as never-before-described species, to help fill existing knowledge gaps. We will also hear from an incredible and groundbreaking expedition that went to the South Pole, a place not known for its biodiversity and usually considered to have very little biodiversity,” explains Spaull about Season 3.

“We will also speak to two very prominent environmental journalists, one from the global North and another from the South, on changes, challenges, and opportunities to reporting on nature and biodiversity over the years. There will be an episode on youth and youth engagement and another on stakeholders and the IPBES stakeholder network. Importantly, there will be an episode on invasive alien species following the launch of the new IPBES report, to be released on September 4, 2023. It’s a season of great excitement, extensive travels, and unmissable insights.”

Nature Insight Season 3 builds on the success already achieved in the past two years, when the podcast explored topics such as zoonotic diseases and pandemics, indigenous and local conservation, achieving transformative change, protecting coral reefs and coastal ecosystems in the context of climate change, the links between business and biodiversity, and the diverse ways in which communities attach different values to nature.

“With time and policy having passed and the pandemic having transitioned, so much has changed in three years since we started the podcast. In the third season, we are really widening the idea of what, where and who nature is and getting stories from those expansions. We get to hear from geographical locations and stakeholders we have not heard from before. We have considered the values of nature in ways we have not done in the past,” Garner expounds.

Spaull points out the relevance of the podcast to implementing the new Global Biodiversity Framework, the outcome of the landmark 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference, in which nations adopted four goals and 23 targets for 2030 as a concrete plan to halt and reverse nature loss. Over six widely varied episodes of the podcast, listeners will hear from experts on the frontlines of biodiversity research and action about cutting-edge science and vibrant personal insights about some of the most critical issues facing people and the planet.

“Making the podcast has been a very exciting experience, with me in the United States, Rob in Germany, the producer in the UK and guests from all over the world. The diversity of people, places and topics has created some profound experiences for me. During the lockdown, I was in my attic at 3 a.m. speaking to an indigenous leader from Western Australia on water rights, and I realised, though isolated, we are still very much connected, and it is this connection to people and nature that enables us to do and achieve great, meaningful things,” Garner recounts.

Spaull says that the podcast has only scratched the surface. In subsequent episodes and seasons, there is still new ground to capture nature in its many unique elements. Season one started during the COVID-19 lockdown, season two as the world was coming out of lockdown, and season three is happening when governments are engaging with new targets for nature. As the world moves on, it is unlikely that Nature Insights will run out of topics to discuss anytime soon.

You can subscribe to Nature Insight on all major podcast platforms or by clicking here.

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Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES. Credit: IPBES

By Manipadma Jena
New Delhi, Jul 3 2022 (IPS)

Speaking to IPS about the importance of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people, Dr Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), stressed the importance of moving from knowledge and policy silos to a more integrated approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially those related to food, water, health, climate change, and energy, which can only be achieved together with the two goals related to biodiversity.

Larigauderie said it was crucial to provide resources and build capacity in under-resourced developing countries where much of the remaining biodiversity is located. Financial resources were particularly needed, she said, to fund global biodiversity observing systems in order to monitor biodiversity in order to follow progress according to internationally agreed indicators and targets. She was speaking to IPS ahead of the ninth session of the IPBES Plenary (#IPBES9) in Bonn, Germany.

IPBES harnesses the best expertise from across a wide range of scientific disciplines and knowledge communities to provide policy-relevant evidence and knowledge, thus helping to catalyse the implementation of knowledge-based policies at all levels of government, the private sector and civil society.

In the face of the worsening climate crisis and rapid biodiversity loss, IPBES’ role has been growing in importance since it was established in 2012.

IPBES’ first thematic assessment, on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production (2016) brought a global focus to issues relating to the protection and importance of all pollinators, and has since resulted in a number of strong policy changes and actions globally, nationally and locally.

At #IPBES9, 139 member governments are expected to approve two crucial new scientific assessment reports, one regarding the sustainable use of wild species and the other regarding nature’s diverse values and valuation.

Four years in development, the ‘Sustainable Use Assessment’ has been written by 85 leading experts, drawing on more than 6,200 references, while the ‘Values Assessment’ has 82 top expert authors, drawing on more than 13,000 references.

An indigenous forest dweller in India’s Andhra Pradesh, inside a protected area, sells cashew nut seeds to visitors. Indigenous communities’ knowledge of biodiversity contributes to the work of IPBES, alongside science, says IPBES’ Executive Secretary. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): IPBES provides policy-relevant knowledge to catalyse the implementation of policies at all levels, including awareness-raising among the public. What outcome do you expect from #IPBES9? 

Anne Larigauderie (AL): We expect to have three major outcomes. Two new reports will be submitted for approval and are planned for release from #IPBES9. One is on the values and valuation of nature and the other is on the sustainable use of wild species. A third major outcome of the meeting is expected to be a decision about starting a new report on business and biodiversity, which would be produced in a couple of years.

IPS: How significant are these new reports’ findings for biodiversity conservation in particular, and more broadly for achieving a range of biodiversity-related SDGs, including food security and climate change? You have mentioned elsewhere that climate science may be working in a silo and not, ideally, together with biodiversity goals. How are IPBES scientific data-based reports helping bring working synergy to these critically interlinked SDGs?

AL: You really put your finger on a very major issue and message that IPBES has been trying to advance.

One of the key conclusions of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was that with the current loss of biodiversity and degradation of nature, we are not going to achieve the two most directly biodiversity-related SDGs: 14 and 15. We will also miss a number of the other goals related to the production of food, water quality, health and climate change.

With the ongoing overuse of pesticides, loss in soil biodiversity and in pollinators, among others, we will for example not be able to reach SDG-2 on zero hunger.

With current high rates of deforestation, land degradation, and the overuse of fertilisers, we also cannot reach SDG-13 – to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts – because all of the actions that I just described, are either contributing to greenhouse gas emissions or reducing the capacity of natural ecosystems to mitigate against climate change.

Deforestation also threatens SDG-3 related to good health. So, protecting biodiversity is not only necessary for conserving nature, but it also really is about reaching all of those other key SDGs and protecting all of nature’s other contributions to people as well.

IPS: How can IPBES ensure wild species, hugely important but still largely under-appreciated, are sustainably used?

AL: Based on the latest scientific data, IPBES assessments inform decision-making. Then it is up to governments and a diverse set of actors to act.

IPBES’ 2016 report on the status of pollinators and the impact on food security has informed quite a lot of new legislation around the world. It triggered a new UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) international initiative on pollinators, for instance. All this contributes to reducing the loss of pollinators. We hope for a similar level of impact from the report on the sustainable use of wild species once it has been released.

IPS: How effectively and urgently are countries implementing the IPBES-informed policies that would result in much-needed transformative changes for reaching biodiversity targets?

AL: Clearly, not enough. The IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded in 2019, that good progress had been achieved towards components of only four out of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be achieved by 2020. Because of the pandemic, the 15^th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), initially scheduled for 2020 has been rescheduled for December 2022. This is of course having an impact on many policies, which are related to the global agenda, including at the national level.

IPS: What kinds of things would the IPBES scientific community think are still needed globally to enable much greater information flow, robust databases and wider involvement of the scientific community?

AL: What we do not have currently for biodiversity is a global biodiversity observing system. The climate change community has had a Global Climate Observing System ever since the Climate Change Convention started.

As part of this system, governments have agreed on a set of essential climate variables (for example, water temperature or salinity) which are measured by all governments thanks to in-situ and remotely sensed capacity, and shared in common databases, thus enabling scientists to project future trends in climate change, among others.

For biodiversity, there is no such global observing system agreed upon and funded by governments, with the proper capacity to monitor changes in biodiversity and thus know if policy implementation has succeeded or failed.

Currently, biodiversity data are collected according to different protocols, stored in separate databases, with many gaps (for example, taxa, geographic, temporal) and no operational capacity, such as dedicated agencies, to ensure the long-term collection and proper storage of data. These gaps are particularly important in developing countries, where much biodiversity lies.

We can formulate the hope that COP15 will emphasise the need for a proper intergovernmental global biodiversity observing system and pave the way for a mechanism to properly resource such a system.

IPS: Is data collection focusing more on flagship species and not enough on other species which may not be as ‘glamorous’ but are critical for healthy ecosystems?

AL: There is definitely a general bias in data collection. Over the years, particularly in the past, people have focused their efforts on the animals they saw, liked, found attractive or interesting – think about birds, which are the most observed animals in the world because they have always fascinated people. That bias is changing, however, as new technologies provide access to environments which were too small or too difficult to reach. Studying soil microflora and microfauna or deep ocean biodiversity is becoming possible, but many of these techniques remain expensive and thus require funds and capacity building.

IPS: Are countries doing enough to preserve and promote indigenous knowledge of biodiversity?

AL: IPBES has placed a major emphasis on indigenous knowledge in its work. It was one of our guiding principles right when IPBES started. The choice was made by governments to not only rely on scientific knowledge in our reports but also on knowledge from indigenous peoples and local communities. Over the years, IPBES has invested quite a lot in developing an inclusive approach and engaging more closely with indigenous communities.

This has made the IPBES reports richer, more diverse, and more relevant to everyone, including indigenous people, who have often managed to keep their environment in better shape than others – even though their territories are threatened by climate change and other issues for which they are often not responsible.

So yes, this is an area that IPBES strongly supports and values. IPBES has actually played quite an innovative role, and inspired others with its unique approach, including the climate change community.

IPS: Can you share with our readers some clues about future IPBES assessments?

AL: We are finishing a report on invasive alien species and their control, that is planned for launch next year and then we have two new reports that are already in progress. One is on the nexus between biodiversity, water, food and health. Here IPBES is looking at how to simultaneously achieve the Sustainable Development Goals related to food, water, and health and also touching upon climate and energy together with biodiversity and ecosystems. We want to really get out of the silo approach and inform people about the options that are available to reach these goals simultaneously and not one at the expense of the other.

The other assessment is on transformative change– where IPBES is exploring the type of values and behaviours which are the origin of the indirect and direct drivers of biodiversity loss, and how they could be transformed. These underlying causes of biodiversity loss are difficult to study and often neglected but they are the root causes of all the issues and need to be better understood to be properly addressed.

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River and mountain in the interior of Dominica. IPBES' collaboration with the private sector funds research and evidence that helps businesses make better-informed decisions to protect biodiversity. Credit: JAK/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Jul 1 2022 (IPS)

In the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, the changing climate often eclipses the loss of ecosystems and species in funding and awareness.

For years, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has been one of the world’s most visible forces for policy and action, informed by science, to protect and restore nature.

IPBES is also now making headway in its goal of ensuring that biodiversity issues receive a similar level of priority and awareness to that of the climate crisis – as well as increased funding. An important part of this involves diversifying its funding sources to include the private sector and philanthropic organisations.

Funded primarily by voluntary contributions from its member governments, IPBES recently announced landmark collaborations with the luxury industry’s Kering Group, global fashion retailer H&M, the BNP Paribas Foundation, AXA Research Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“There is a dual purpose in the way we have engaged with the private sector over the last few years, both to find opportunities for their support and to engage them more closely with our work and its outcomes, so that they can use those in their own activities as well,” IPBES Head of Communications Rob Spaull told IPS.

To protect the objectivity and credibility of the Platform’s scientific research, formal collaboration with private sector companies follows a rigorous due diligence process that can take up to one year and is spearheaded by a legal team from the United Nations Environment Programme, which hosts the IPBES secretariat.

“We ensure that any kind of contribution that might be received from the private sector has no influence on the science that IPBES publishes. It was really important for our member States that we implement a model that protects the independence of the Platform,” Spaull said. “We accept contributions, but those contributions go into the IPBES Trust Fund.”

IPBES says the science is clear – businesses can be a vital part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis.

“We want to help the private sector move forward, and we want them on board with us. Our vision is that through their commitment to the work of IPBES, we also help the private sector to better understand and decrease its impact on biodiversity,” said Sonia Gueorguiev, IPBES Head of Development.

“More and more businesses are understanding how biodiversity is strongly interlinked with their core business, as companies rely on nature for resources, and they are recognising how important it is for them, both for ethical and economic reasons, to progressively incorporate biodiversity into their strategies and business models.”

IPBES has produced some of the world’s leading and most cited scientific reports, including the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which concluded that one million species of plants and animals face extinction, while human activity has significantly altered 75 percent of the earth’s land surface and over 60 percent of the ocean area.

For Spaull, IPBES’ budget pales in comparison to the Platform’s value, which includes the many years of voluntary expert contributions to every IPBES report.

“For example, on the Global Assessment Report, we did a bit of a back-of-the-envelope calculation and added up the different person-hours that were contributed free of charge by the experts over the three years that they worked on the report. It added up to more than 17 years of work, which was essentially a voluntary expert contribution to the Platform. The operating budget doesn’t actually reflect the immense value that is created by the Platform.”

These recent private sector collaborations are a solid foundation for IPBES’ funding diversification but represent a small fraction of what is needed for greater financial stability.

“They are a good start, but they are still a start. That is one of the reasons why we are looking forward to the future where hopefully, we will be able to expand into new sectors with other kinds of private sector and philanthropic organisations in a similar way,” said Spaull.

IPBES is already working on a number of new reports. Two highly anticipated assessments will be released in July, after four years of work, one on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, and one on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature.

IPBES will publish another report next year on invasive alien species and their control and is already working on one about reaching simultaneously sustainable development goals related to biodiversity, water, food and health, as well as one on transformative change. A new business and biodiversity assessment is also planned that will assist businesses with assessing their impacts and dependence on biodiversity.

“The IPBES assessments enjoy strong global recognition and visibility,” Gueorguiev said. “As populations of plants and animals are shrinking and nature’s contributions to people diminish, individuals and providers of funds will make consumption and investment choices that will exclude those companies whose activities contribute to the decline of biodiversity. Public-private partnerships and collaborations are one of the solutions to both the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis,” said Gueorguiev.

“Biodiversity is set to become a social issue as unavoidable as climate change, and we are working with companies with strong sustainability leadership in their industries, which can enable them to set sustainability standards,” she said.

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A placard on display at activists' demonstration outside the 4th meeting of the CBD Working Group at the UNEP headquarter in Nairobi. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
Nairobi, Jun 27 2022 (IPS)

As the last working group meeting of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Agenda concluded here on Sunday, the delegates’ job at COP15 Montreal just got tougher as delegates couldn’t finalize the text of the agenda. Texts involving finance, cost and benefit-sharing, and digital sequencing – described by many as ‘most contentious parts of the draft agenda barely made any progress as negotiators failed to reach any consensus.

Nairobi – the Unattempted ‘Final Push’

The week-long 4^th meeting of the Working Group of the Biodiversity Convention took place from June 21-26, three months after the 3^rd meeting of the group was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting, attended by a total of 1634 participants, including 950 country representatives, had the job cut out for them: Read the draft Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and its 21 targets, discuss, and clean up the text – target by target, sentence by sentence, at least up to 80%.

But, on Saturday – a day before the meeting was to wrap up, David Ainsworth – head of Communications at CBD, hinted that the progress was far slower than expected. Ainsworth mentioned that the total cleaning progress made was just about 8%.

To put it in a clearer context, said Ainsworth, only two targets now had a clean text – Target 19.2 (strengthening capacity-building and development, access to and transfer of technology) and target 12 (urban biodiversity). This means that in Montreal, they could be placed on the table right away for the parties to decide on, instead of debating the language. All the other targets, the work progress has been from around 50% to none, said Ainsworth.

An entire day later, on Sunday evening local time, co-chairs of the WG4 Francis Ogwal and Basile Van Havre confirmed that those were indeed the only two targets with ‘clean’ texts. In other words, no real work had been done in the past 24 hours.

On June 21, at the opening session of the meeting, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, described the Nairobi meeting as an opportunity for a ‘final push’ to finalize the GBF. On Sunday, she called on the parties to “vigorously engage with the text, to listen to each other and seek consensus, and to prepare the final text for adoption at COP 15”.

Answering a question from IPS News, Mrema also confirmed that there would be a 5^th meeting of the Working Group before the Montreal COP, indicating the work done in the Nairobi meeting wasn’t enough to produce a draft that was ready to be discussed for adoption.

The final push, it appeared, had not even been attempted.

Bottlenecks and Stalemate

According to several observers, instead of cleaning up 80% of the texts over the past six days, negotiators had left 80% of the text in brackets, which signals disagreement among parties. Not only did countries fail to progress, but in some cases, new disagreements threatened to move the process in the opposite direction. The most fundamental issues were not even addressed this week, including how much funding would be committed to conserving biodiversity and what percentage figures the world should strive to protect, conserve, and restore to address the extinction crisis.

True to the traditions of the UN, the CBD wouldn’t be critical of any party. However, on Sunday evening, Francis Ogwal indicated that rich nations had been dragging their feet on meeting the commitment of donating to global biodiversity conservation. Without naming anyone, Ogwal reminded the negotiators that the more time they took, the tougher they would get the decision.

At present, said Ogwal, 700 billion was needed to stop and recover global biodiversity. “If you keep giving less and less, the problems magnify. Ten years down the line, this will not be enough,” he said.

The civil society was more vocal in criticizing the delegates for losing yet another opportunity.

According to Brian O’Donnell, Director of the Campaign for Nature, the negotiations were faltering, with some key issues being at a stalemate. It is, therefore, up to heads of state and other political and United Nations leaders to act with urgency. “But time is now running out, and countries need to step up, show the leadership that this moment requires, and act urgently to find compromise and solutions,” O’Donnell said in a statement.

The Next Steps

The CBD Secretariat mentioned a string of activities that would follow the Nairobi meeting to speed up the process of building a consensus among the delegates. The activities include bilateral meetings with some countries, regional meetings with others, and a Working Group 5 meeting which will be a pre-COP event before COP15.

Finally, the CBD is taking a glass-half-filled approach toward the GBF, which is reflected in the words of Mrema: “These efforts (Nairobi meeting) are considerable and have produced a text that, with additional work, will be the basis for reaching the 2050 vision of the Convention: A life in harmony with nature,” she says.

The upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference will be held from 5 to December 17 in Montreal, Canada, under the presidency of the Government of China. With the bulk of the work left incomplete, the cold December weather of Montreal is undoubtedly all set to be heated with intense debates and negotiations.
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Mrinalini Rai, head of Women4Biodiversity and leader of the Women’s Caucus at the UN Biodiversity Convention and Cristina Eghenter of World Wildlife Fund for Nature, at a media roundtable at the ongoing UN CBD Working Group 4 meeting in Nairobi. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
Nairobi, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

“I often hear, ‘What do women have to do with biodiversity?’ And I want to ask them back, ‘What do men have to do (with biodiversity)?’,” says Mrinalini Rai, a prominent gender equality rights advocate at the 4th Meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group of the UN Biodiversity Convention, which started this week in Nairobi.

Her comment appears to reflect the frustration women activists feel as their demand for a specific target on gender equality – known as Target 22 – shows few signs of progress.

Target 22 was first submitted last September at the 3rd meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) in Geneva. The target, when summarized, proposes to “ensure women and girls’ equitable access and benefits from conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, as well as their informed and effective participation at all levels of policy and decision making related to biodiversity.”

The target was proposed officially by Costa Rica, with the support of GLURAC – a group comprising 11 countries from Latin America and West Africa which has been since accepted as a point of discussion by the CBD. The GRULAC members are Guatemala, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, and Tanzania.

However, this week in Nairobi, when asked by IPS for their comments on Target 22, the co-chairs of the CBD appeared largely dismissive. “We already have a Gender Action Plan,” said Basile Van Havre – one of the two co-chairs, implying little importance or need for a standalone target.

Unsurprisingly, the draft remains a barely-discussed target on Friday – two days before the current meeting ends.

Gender in Biodiversity and Drafting of Target 22

Ratified by 200 nations, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the first legally binding global treaty. It has three main goals: conserve biological diversity, promote sustainable use of its components, and attain fair and equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the utilization of genetic resources.

The convention’s 14th Conference of the Parties, held in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2018, adopted a decision to develop a new biodiversity framework that builds on the CBD’s 2011-2020 strategic plan known as “Aichi Biodiversity Targets”. The decision also includes “a gender-responsive and gender-balanced process for the development of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework”.

However, while a lot of progress has been made since 2018 on crafting and shaping the targets for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the Convention has yet to truly center gender issues. Of the 21 targets within the draft Framework, only one target mentions women, and no single target refers to gender. Some parties have stated that since the Gender Plan of Action (GPA) will complement the Framework, there is no need for a standalone target on gender. Feminists and gender equality advocates, however, believe it is critical to have strong integration of gender within the Framework itself to anchor and give life to the Gender Plan of Action.

“What we are saying is that this target is not supposed to be seen as something separate from everything in the GBF. When you adopt a standalone target on gender equality, it will guide all the work being done under the framework and to operationalize the framework including the communications, knowledge management, capacity building and financing of the new mechanism”, says Rai.

Cristina Eghenter, Global Governance Policy Coordinator at World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) links the currently lacking gender-segregated data and how the adoption of Target 22 could help plug the gaps.

“Women’s contribution to biodiversity is often questioned because this contribution is underreported and therefore, undervalued. A standalone target on gender equality would lead to the setting of clear indicators and a monitoring system which would then contribute to the production of gender-segregated data,” Eghenter points out.

Gaining support from other advocacy rights and equity groups

UNCBD Working Group 4 meeting in Nairobi in session. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Jennifer Corpuz leads the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IPFB) – a collection of representatives from indigenous governments, indigenous non-governmental organizations, and indigenous scholars and activists that organize around the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

On being asked her stance on a standalone, specific target on gender equality, Corpuz says that she wholeheartedly supports this. “When the GBF has included target 21, it is a natural progression that there should be a target 22”. Corpuz also explains that  Target 21 – the only target to mention women in the GFB, emphasizes indigenous communities and therefore, it will be more helpful to have a standalone target on gender equality that goes beyond women and is inclusive of all genders.

“We, therefore, strongly support Target 22 and hope it will be taken up for adoption at COP15,” she says.

Besides, IIFB and WWF, several other rights and equity advocacy groups are supporting the proposed new target. The Global Youth Biodiversity Network – an advocacy group that is demanding greater focus on youths in the GBF, also has voiced its support for a target on gender equality. Other groups lending their support are the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), the Convention on Biological Diversity Alliance (CBDA), and the Women Caucus at the UNCBD.

Expectation VS Reality

As the Nairobi meeting nears its end – the conference will close on Sunday – there are more meetings of the contacts groups which oversee discussing and finalizing the text of the draft GBF with the negotiation in each meeting turning more intense. However, when it comes to Target 22 – the contact group 4, responsible for discussing and cleaning up the text of both targets related to gender, has had only one reading of the Target 22.

According to Benjamin Schachter, Human Rights Officer on Climate Change and Environment at ORCHR, the text of the target 22 is right now ‘full of brackets’ which indicates there is hardly any agreement among the contact group members discussing the target on its content.

As the GBF is expected to have at least 80% of ‘clean text’ before it is presented by CBD to the parties for discussion and adoption, the question that most people are wondering is if the draft GBF at COP15 includes a target for gender equality at all? Some are even asking if the draft in its current form (full of brackets) can be rejected by the parties altogether if they feel the task to clean it up is too arduous?

Total exclusion is ‘extremely unlikely,’ explains Schafter, explaining the technical process: since the target has been officially proposed by a group of parties and discussed at the contact group, the parties must work harder and get the draft to a shape where it can be considered for consensus building and eventual adoption.

A long way to Montreal

The onus, then, lies equally on parties as well as on groups such as Women4Biodiversity to lobby more parties and gain their support. Already, in the Nairobi meeting, a few more countries including Maldives, Norway, and the EU have expressed their support, taking the total number of supporting parties to 22.

Norway has, in fact,  also proposed an alternative text for the Target which reads “Ensure gender equality in the implementation of the global biodiversity framework and the achievement of the 3 objectives of the convention including by recognizing equal rights and access to land and natural resources of women and girls and their meaningful and informed participation in policy and decision-making”

“This language is both cleaner and stronger”, says Schachter.

Mrinalini Rai of Women4Biodiversity agrees: “Norway proposed and supported by American countries a new way to address the rights of gender equality and rights of women to lands and natural resources which is a fantastic improvement and if this new text comes in, it would be monumental step forward for CBD,” she says.

But can the advocates and supporters get 108 remaining countries to read, give input and prepare themselves for an informed discussion in the next five months? Undoubtedly, that remains an arduous task for the nations, requiring manpower, time, and resources.

The Target 22 advocates appear well aware of the challenge ahead: “It is going to be a long road to Montreal,” says Ana di Pangracio of the Convention of Biodiversity Alliance (CBDA).

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The recent eviction debacle involving the Maasai community in the Loliondo division in Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro District has elevated indigenous people’s concerns about losing their ancestral lands under the ‘30by30’ plan in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Bradford Zak/Unsplash

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 23 2022 (IPS)

In early June 2022, more than 30 people from the Maasai community in the Loliondo division in Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro District were reportedly injured, and one person died following clashes with security forces over the demarcation of their ancestral lands for a new game reserve.

According to human rights organisations, the Maasai community was blocking eviction from its grazing sites at Lolionda over the demarcation of 1 500km of the Maasai ancestral land, which the government of Tanzania has leased as a hunting block to a United Arab Emirates company.

The eviction of the Maasai is a realisation of fears indigenous communities have about the loss of their ancestral lands under the ‘30by30’ plan proposed in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The plan calls for conserving 30 percent of the earth’s land and sea areas. Close to 100 countries have endorsed the science-backed proposal to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030, which is target 3 of the 21 targets in the GBF.

Indigenous communities worry that the current plan does not protect their rights and control over ancestral lands and will trigger mass evictions of communities by creating protected areas meant to save biodiversity.

The fourth meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework opened in Nairobi, Kenya, this week (June 21-26), hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The meeting is expected to negotiate the final new pact for adoption at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, which includes the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be held in Montreal, Canada in December 2022.

Human rights in the deal for nature

Indigenous groups are calling for a human-rights approach to conservation and strengthening of community land tenure. They emphasise that the international pact to stop and reverse biodiversity loss should include indigenous communities like the Maasai.

Jennifer Corpuz, Indigenous lawyer and global policy expert. Credit: J Corpuz

“We are highlighting the situation with the Maasai in Tanzania as an example of what should not be happening anymore, and the best way to avoid this is to ensure that there is a human rights language in the post-2020 framework,” Indigenous lawyer and global policy expert Jennifer Corpuz, a Kankana-ey Igorot from the Philippines and a member of the International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity (IIFB) told IPS in a telephone interview.

“In particular, we identify target 3 of the framework, which is area-based conservation and the proposal to expand the coverage of the areas of land and sea that are protected. It is important to have the rights of indigenous people and local communities recognised,” Corpuz noted.

Corpuz said there is growing recognition among scientists about the importance of traditional knowledge and how it can guide decision-making on climate change and biodiversity, as well as the participation of indigenous people in biodiversity monitoring, which are the focus of targets 20 and 21 of the framework.

The CBD COP15 is expected to take stock of progress towards achieving the CBD’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, as well as decide on a new global biodiversity framework negotiated every ten years. The CBD is an international treaty on natural and biological resources ratified by 196 countries to protect biodiversity, use biodiversity without destroying it, and equally share any benefits from genetic diversity.

Indigenous leaders say the evidence is clear about the role of indigenous communities in biodiversity protection following recent reports produced by the Nairobi-based UNEP and other conservation organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

“Achieving the ambitious goals and targets in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework will not be possible without the lands and territories recognised, sustained, protected, and restored by [Indigenous peoples and local communities],” the report noted.

Under siege worldwide, from the rainforests of the Amazon and the Congo to the savannahs of East Africa, indigenous communities could continue to play a protective role, according to their leaders and scientists whose work supports the quest of indigenous peoples to control what happens on their territories.

Biodiversity in extinction

A landmark report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES),  has warned that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades. The assessment report noted that at least a quarter of the global land area is traditionally owned, managed, and used by indigenous peoples.

“Nature managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities is under increasing pressure but is generally declining less rapidly than in other lands – although 72% of local indicators developed and used by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities show the deterioration of nature that underpins local livelihoods,” the report noted. It highlighted that the areas of the world projected to experience significant adverse effects from climate change, ecosystem functions and nature’s contributions to people are also areas in which large concentrations of Indigenous Peoples and many of the world’s poorest communities live.

Experts have warned that the success of the post-2020 GBF depends on adequate financing to achieve the targets and goals in the framework.

The finance component needs more attention, political priority and progress, Brian O’Donnell, Director, Campaign for Nature, told a media briefing alluding to the last framework that failed to reverse biodiversity loss because of a lack of financial commitment.

“This is no time for half measures. This is the time for bold ambition by governments around the world… We think a global commitment of at least one percent of GDP is needed annually to address the biodiversity crisis, that is the level of crisis finance that we need to materialise, and parties need to commit to that level by 2030,” O’Donnell said. “We feel wealthy countries need to increase the support for developing  countries in terms of investing at least 60 billion annually into biodiversity conservation in the developing world.”

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On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, and it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

The coming decades will be crucial in shaping and implementing a transformative land agenda, according to a scientist at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster, who spoke with IPS ahead of the start of activities to mark World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) on Monday, Jun. 17, said this was one of the key messages emerging for policy- and other decision-makers.

This comes after the dire warnings in recent publications on desertification, land degradation and drought of the Global Land Outlook, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration, World Atlas of Desertification, and IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

“The main message is: things are not improving. The issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities, but we now have to start implementing the knowledge that we already have to combat desertification,” Akhtar-Schuster told IPS.

“It’s not only technology that we have to implement, it is the policy level that has to develop a governance structure which supports sustainable land management practices.”

IPBES Science and Policy for People and Nature found that the biosphere and atmosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, have been deeply reconfigured by people.

The report shows that 75 percent of the land area is very significantly altered, 66 percent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and 85 percent of the wetland area has been lost.

“There are of course areas which are harder hit; these are areas which are experiencing extreme drought which makes it even more difficult to sustainably use land resources,” Akhtar-Schuster said.

“On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, so there’s no continent, there’s no country which can just lean back and say this is not our issue. Everybody has to do something.”

Akhtar-Schuster said there is sufficient knowledge out there which already can support evidence-based implementation of technology so that at least land degradation does not continue.

While the information is available, Akhtar-Schuster said it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution.

“There is no top-down approach. You need the people on the ground, you need the people who generate knowledge and you need the policy makers to implement that knowledge. You need everybody,” the UNCCD-SPI co-chair said.

“Nobody in a community, in a social environment, can say this has nothing to do with me. We are all consumers of products which are generated from land. So, we in our daily lives – the way we eat, the way we dress ourselves – whatever we do has something to do with land, and we can take decisions which are more friendly to land than what we’re doing at the moment.”

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster says things are not improving and that the issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

UNCCD Lead Scientist Dr. Barron Joseph Orr said it’s important to note that while the four major assessments were all done for different reasons, using different methodologies, they are all converging on very similar messages.

He said while in the past land degradation was seen as a problem in a place where there is overgrazing or poor management practices on agricultural lands, the reality is, that’s not influencing the change in land.

“What’s very different from the past is the rate of land transformation. The pace of that change is considerable, both in terms of conversion to farm land and conversion to built-up areas,” Orr told IPS.

“We’ve got a situation where 75 percent of the land surface of the earth has been transformed, and the demand for food is only going to go up between now and 2050 with the population growth expected to increase one to two billion people.”

That’s a significant jump. Our demand for energy that’s drawn from land, bio energy, or the need for land for solar and wind energy is only going to increase but these studies are making it clear that we are not optimising our use,” Orr added.

Like Akhtar-Schuster, Orr said it’s now public knowledge what tools are necessary to sustainably manage agricultural land, and to restore or rehabilitate land that has been degraded.

“We need better incentives for our farmers and ranchers to do the right thing on the landscape, we have to have stronger safeguards for tenures so that future generations can continue that stewardship of the land,” he added.

The international community adopted the Convention to Combat Desertification in Paris on Jun. 17, 1994.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Convention and the World Day to Combat Desertification in 2019 (#2019WDCD), UNCCD will look back and celebrate the 25 years of progress made by countries on sustainable land management.

At the same time, they will look at the broad picture of the next 25 years where they will achieve land degradation neutrality.

The anniversary campaign runs under the slogan “Let’s grow the future together,” with the global observance of WDCD and the 25th anniversary of the Convention on Jun. 17, hosted by the government of Turkey.

Roseate spoonbills (Platalea ajaja), coastal birds in Sonora, Mexico. Conservation efforts over the past decade have reduced the extinction risks for mammals and birds in 109 countries, however, there remains a mass loss of biodiversity around the world. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 7 2019 (IPS)

An alarming report about the massive loss of biodiversity around the world warns that future generations will be at risk if urgent action isn’t taken to protect the more than one million species of plants and animals threatened with extinction.

Such extinction could happen “within decades” and could affect 40 percent of amphibian species, more than a third of marine mammals and nearly 33 percent of reef-forming corals, said the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“Biodiversity is important for human well-being, and we humans are destroying it,” Sir Robert Watson, the outgoing chair of the IPBES, said as the report was launched Monday, May 7.

The body, formed in 2012 and comprising more than 130 government members, stated in its comprehensive review that nature is “declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history”.

The IPBES Global Assessment Report added that the rate of species extinction is also “accelerating”, and that this entails serious effects for the world’s human population as well, with an increasing impact on food, water and energy security, and on peace and stability.

“It’s a security issue in so far as the loss of natural resources, especially in poor, developing countries, can lead to conflict,” Watson said.

In a media briefing at the end of a six-day plenary—hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris—scientists called for bold measures at all levels of society to save the planet’s biodiversity, putting the issue at the same level of urgency as climate change.

“Unless we act now, we will undermine human well-being for current and future generations,” Watson said. “It’s a moral issue: we should not destroy nature. And it’s an ethical issue because the loss of biodiversity hurts the poorest of people, further exacerbating an already inequitable world.”

While climate change up to now has not been a dominant factor in biodiversity loss, it is expected to equal or surpass the issues of overfishing, pollution of sea and land (with toxic waste, plastics and heavy metals), the spread of invasive species decimating native ones, and the destruction of natural forests, the IPBES said.

Scientists said the “picture is less clear” for insect species, but the available evidence points to about 10 percent being threatened.

IPBES experts further state that at least 680 “vertebrate species” (or species with backbone) have been driven to extinction since the 16th century, and more than nine percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened. This has happened at a faster rate than in previous eras.

The 455 experts involved in the report analysed upwards of 15,000 scientific papers among their fields of research, said IPBES Executive Secretary Anne Larigauderie. They ranked the five “direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts” on the world’s estimated eight million species.

These five drivers are: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution; and invasive alien species, according to the report.

Ocean pollution, with toxic waste and tons of plastic devastating marine life, is now common knowledge, but perhaps people are less aware that the use of fertilisers has created some 400 coastal ecosystem “dead zones”, affecting 245,000 square kilometres.

Despite the disturbing statistics, Larigauderie said the IPBES still wished to send a message of hope.

“We don’t want that people feel discouraged, that there’s nothing that can be done, that we’ve lost the battle, because we’ve not,” she said.

A CEIBA Biological Centre (CEIBA) study investigated the impact of global warming on tropical ectotherms, namely, butterflies and lizards, whose body temperatures are determined by the environment. Amazonian ectotherms may be adjusting their behaviour to cope with the heat, but at the expense of the normal activities required for survival and breeding. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Conservation efforts over the past decade have reduced the extinction risks for mammals and birds in 109 countries, and more than a hundred highly threatened birds, mammals and reptiles are “estimated to have benefitted from the eradication of invasive mammals on islands”, according to IPBES experts.

They emphasised that there was still time to give nature a chance to recover if the world takes transformative action for global sustainability, including the use of renewables, ecological farming methods and reducing run-off pollution into oceans.

“What we offer is scientific evidence never put together before,” said Eduardo S. Brondizio, one of the three co-chairs of the report and professor of anthropology at Indiana University.

“This is evidence that can be taken seriously, and people can be awakened to take action,” Brondizio told IPS. “This report is important for change.”

During the briefing at UNESCO, Brondizio had clear words for society at large and for the financial sectors and policy makers.

“We need to change our narratives,” he said. “Both our individual narratives that associate wasteful consumption with quality of life and with status, and the narratives of the economic systems that still consider that environmental degradation and social inequality are inevitable outcomes of economic growth.”

“Economic growth is a means and not an end,” he added. “We need to look for the quality of life of the planet.”

He said that “positive incentives” were required to “move away from harmful subsidies” that were contributing to unsustainable business models.

The report says there has been a 15 percent increase in global per capita consumption of materials since 1980 and a 300 percent increase in food crop production since 1970, reducing the habitat of some species and causing pollution through fertilisers.

Elephants from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services states more than one million species of plants and animals threatened with extinction. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

Meanwhile, 85 percent of wetlands present in 1700 had been lost by 2000, and 3.5 percent of domesticated breed of birds were extinct by 2016.

Among the “cross-sectoral solutions” that the report proposes, Brondizio highlighted complementary and inter-dependent approaches to food production and conservation, sustainable fisheries, land-based climate-change mitigation and “nature-based” initiatives in cities – which is crucial for overall sustainability.

He pointed out that over the past decade, the “largest portion of urban growth has been in the urban South”, with the largest portion being among the poor who live in cities with stressed environmental issues.

If adequate action isn’t taken to halt the loss of biodiversity in cities, to deal with climate change and to improve quality of life for urban residents, the negative impact will be globally felt, he said.

Brondizio equally called for the need to recognise the knowledge, innovations and practices, institutions and values of indigenous peoples and local communities.

“They are equal partners in this journey, and we need their inclusion and participation in environmental governance,” he said.

Also addressing the report, UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay stressed the importance of education in ensuring sustainability and of sharing knowledge to heighten awareness. 

“Following the adoption of this historic report, no one will be able to claim that they did not know. We can no longer continue to destroy the diversity of life. This is our responsibility towards future generations,” she said.

Grazing rhino picks out grass from thorny, pink-flowered mimosa weed. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is collecting perspectives from science to indigenous knowledge in a new assessment on the many values of nature. Credit:Ranjita Biswas/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 4 2019 (IPS)

Humans have long had a varied and complicated relationship with nature—from its aesthetic value to its economic value to its protective value. What if you could measure and analyse these values? One group is trying to do just that.

Over 150 years ago, philosopher Henry David Thoreau highlighted humankind’s responsibility to respect and care for nature.

“Every creature is better alive than dead; men, moose, and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it,” he wrote in an essay.

At that very same moment in history, the Second Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution were at its peak in Europe and the United States, contributing to the depletion of natural resources and pollution that societies are dealing with today.

Now, rates of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions have dramatically increased, threatening the future of societies.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), desertification, caused by the degradation of soil and land, is affecting one-third of the Earth’s land surface. The issue already affects 250 million people across the world, and it threatens an additional one billion people who depend on land for their needs.

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) aims to bring these vast, and sometimes seemingly conflicting, perspectives from science to indigenous knowledge in a new assessment on the many values of nature, helping create a vision on how to work towards a more prosperous, sustainable future.

IPS spoke to Unai Pascual, one of the co-chairs of IPBES’ new assessment, on the importance of understanding the complex issue.

IPS (Inter Press Service): What exactly are the values of nature?

Unai Pascual (UP): There are many values because people understand values in different ways. If you talk to a philosopher, they would tell you what values are from a philosophical standpoint like moral and ethical values. If you talk to an economist, they would talk to you about economic values and the values of things reflected in the market.

One of the objectives of the assessment is to provide a clear framework that can conceptually guide anything related to how people measure and articulate those values and… how those values influence decision making and policies, and governance in general.

How we take care of nature and how we exploit it have to do with the underlying values that we have about nature and the meaning we provide to these values in every day life.

IPS: Why was this issue chosen as part of the assessment, and why is it important to examine these values?

UP: We need this assessment to understand the connection between how we perceive nature, the way we interact with it, and the quality of life of people.

Those policies, norms, and habits of people are based on the underlying values that we all hold as individuals and as a society. We need to understand those values in order to understand how we set up those institutions which, at the end of the day, are the ones which are going to determine the fate of nature and how we perceive how nature affects our quality of life.

Understanding the role of these social norms and policies are at the heart of what IPBES is about. IPBES recognises that we need to understand those in order to really connect the dots—connect nature and human well-being.

It is necessary to connect the way we value nature with the future of nature and therefore the future of human wellbeing.

IPS: 2018 saw a number of big reports on climate change and land degradation from IPCC, UNEP, and even IPBES. Will this new assessment be similar, and supplement these reports?

UP: Yes, the values assessment is a methodological one in spirit. The idea is that any assessment that will follow after the values assessment will be able to reflect on issues around values in ways that has not been possible before.

And so far, IPBES has tried to provide coherence around values since its inception. The assessment of values provides a great opportunity for IPBES and other platforms to see the importance of recognising different types of values about nature and ways to bring them into decision making.

This is a sort of conceptual and methodological pillar which will inform many scientific efforts within IPBES and outside IPBES as well.

IPS: What do you expect to find, and how will the research be undertaken? Does this involve talking to communities around the world, including indigenous communities?

UP: We are going to find a way to integrate and provide a coherent picture around the different understandings about values. This is of critical importance because otherwise the scientific community will continue talking about values but each community will understand that in a different way.

If we don’t have coherence, we are not going to be able to move forward and to design policies that respect those different ways of valuing nature.

We will [also] find the connections that have not been explicitly addressed by the scientific community about how values explicitly or implicitly affect decision making with regards to nature be it through policy, consumption choices by consumers, production means by producers… that is, connecting values with governance and human behaviour.

Those values are dynamic, they change over time…Those can affect policies and goals of society and individuals and therefore change how we use nature or how we connect to issues such as climate change and land degradation.

What we are going to try to portray as well is how the future of humankind, of different societies’ institutions and governments, would have to be transformed with regard to the values and how we put them in practice in changing people’s behaviour towards more sustainable and just futures.
We need to build the capacity of the scientific community and the public at large to connect our diversity of values and the sustainability challenges of humankind.

Another knowledge system which is at the heart of IPBES is that of indigenous and local communities. It is very important to understand how they perceive and relate with nature. Their approach to connecting to nature is fundamentally different from many Western societies. We know that much of the biodiversity that underpins the health of the planet is taken care of and managed by indigenous communities.

It is critical to bring their perspectives, knowledge systems, and values into the assessment.

This is a big challenge on how to bridge both the scientific and the indigenous knowledge systems and bring them in a way that both are recognised as being vital for understanding the role of values in society and how this can impact the future of the planet.

Q: How could the international community use this assessment once completed?

UP: This could be a resource for many years to come. I hope that it will clarify the different types of values that exist in society so that different perspectives on values are recognised and accepted as being legitimate.

As scientists, we provide information and knowledge about how nature and human well-being are connected. We should take into consideration that there are different pathways and different perspectives on those connections because there are different ways of relating to nature. Such diversity is important to be respected and nurtured in the quest for sustainability.

That’s a call for the scientific community whenever we do assessments or systemise knowledge to connect the state of the planet in terms of its various environmental dimensions from climate change to land degradation to biodiversity loss…when they try to connect this to human beings, the vector that connects them are values.

We hope that policymakers or decision makers can make better decisions in the quest for sustainability by taking into account these different, legitimate perspectives on the values of and about nature.

*Interview was edited for clarity and length

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