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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The International Livestock Research Institute is using genomics to breed livestock suited to local conditions and production systems to meet community needs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Oct 22 2024 (IPS)

Christian Tiambo has always wished to uplift local farmers’ communities through cutting-edge science.

As climate change wreaked havoc on local agriculture, Tiambo, a livestock scientist at the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH) and at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), focused on conserving and developing livestock that could withstand environmental stress.

Genomics, a Game Changer

Tiambo’s research took an exciting turn when part of his PhD studies was to characterize and establish local poultry populations with interesting resilience potential. Yet, the need for local access to advanced genomic tools was a barrier to fully unlocking this potential.

Today, the power of digital data and sequencing information is transformative. It is driving the discovery of genes and innovation in agriculture through the identification and deep characterization of pathogens in plants and animals. That is helping scientists to breed livestock suited to local conditions and production systems, thereby benefiting local communities that have been custodians of genetic resources for generations.

But there is a catch: Africa, like other parts of the global south, is a genetic goldmine but has not fully capitalized on the digital sequencing information (DSI) derived from its genetic heritage. DSI is a tool that provides information for the precise identification of living organisms and allows the development of diagnosis tools and technologies for conservation in animals and plants. Besides, DSI is also used in investigating the relationships within and between species and in plant and animal breeding to predict their breeding value and potential contribution to their future generations.

Tiambo said DSI can be used to adjust the genotypes and produce animals with desired traits, adapted to local conditions but which have higher productivity.

A promising innovation has been the development of surrogate technologies in poultry, small ruminants, cattle or pigs—giving opportunity to local and locally adapted and resilient breeds to carry and disseminate semen from improved breeds in challenging environments.

“Farmers would not need to keep requesting inseminators and semen from outside their village,” Tiambo explained, noting that this shift could dramatically improve livestock breeding, dissemination of elite genetics, boost food security and alleviate poverty in remote rural areas of Africa.

Global cooperation among stakeholders of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is key to establishing international guidelines on benefit-sharing from animal genetics resources and their associated information, including DSI.

Christian Tiambo, a livestock scientist at the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health. Credit: ILRI

Using genetics and associated traditional knowledge includes adapting specific livestock to specific environments. This contributes to the development of improved and elite tropical animal breeds with particular traits that meet community needs to improve livelihoods, he said.

“Local livestock is not just for food but is our heritage, culture and social value,” said Tiambo, adding that conserving livestock is conserving local culture, social ethics and inclusion, with gender aspects being considered. For example, the Muturu cattle and the Bakosi cattle in Nigeria and Cameroon are animals used in dowry, The Bamileke cattle remain sacred and maintain the ecosystem of sacred forest in part of the western highlands of Cameroon.

“I have never seen any traditional ceremony done with exotic chicken in any African village,” he said.

Genetics and DSI, according to Tiambo, are “game changers” in breeding livestock with desired traits faster. What used to take five to seven years or more, he says, can now be done in just three or four cycles with the help of genomics.

ILRI has been working with the Roslin Institute, the Kenyan Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization and collaborating with the African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the National Biosafety Authority, farmer communities, and National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in Africa and Southeast Asia in the conservation and development of improved local chicken using stem cell technologies.

Bridging the Capacity Gap

DSI needs infrastructure and human resources. “A lot of infrastructure, equipment and skills are coming from outside Africa, but how can we also generate DSI and use it locally?” Tiambo asked. He worries that without developing local capacity to harness DSI, “a lot of helicopter research will still be happening in Africa where people fly in, just pick what they want, fly out, and no scientists in Africa are involved in generating and using DSI.”

Technologically advanced countries have often exploited these genetic resources, developing commercial products and services without clear mechanisms for sharing the monetary and non-monetary benefits with local communities as ethics and common sense would require—an injustice that needs urgent correction.

The use of DSI on genetic resources is one of the four goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022 with the aim of stopping global biodiversity loss by 2030.

ThankGod Ebenezer, bioinformatician and co-founder of the African BioGenome Project, argues that Africa must seize this moment to build and strengthen local capacity to produce and use DSI from genetic resources.

“The establishment of a benefit-sharing mechanism for DSI is a first step in the right direction and Africa needs to maximise even this first step by putting in a framework to generate and make use of DSI locally,” Ebenezer told IPS, explaining that Africa needs to be able to do genetic sequencing on the ground with local scientists having the capacity to translate and use it.

The Africa BioGenome Project, of which Tiambo is also a founding member, is a continental biodiversity conservation initiative that has laid out a roadmap for how Africa can benefit from DSI and the planned multilateral fund.

“The main benefit comes from being able to use DSI and ultimately share it with the global community in line with the national and international rules and regulations,” said Ebenezer. “Because if you cannot use DSI yourself, you will always feel like a supplier, like someone who gets crude oil from the ground and asks someone else to add value to it and gets several products.”

“The multilateral fund is key,” Ebenezer stresses. “If someone converts DSI into revenue, for instance, they’re only looking at paying 1% back into the fund. Is that enough for the communities that hold this biodiversity?”

At COP16 in Colombia (Oct 21-Nov 1, 2024), world leaders will discuss mechanisms for fair and equitable sharing of DSI benefits, a critical step for Africa and other biodiversity-rich regions. For example, Africa hosts eight of the 34 biodiversity hotspots in the world, according to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

“In terms of the negotiation, we would like the DSI fund to be approved so that it’s ready for implementation because this is an implementation COP,” Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia and COP16 President-designate, told a press briefing ahead of COP16.

“We would like the decision of the parties to give the COP the teeth for implementation. One is the DSI,” Muhamad said.

Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, is hopeful that COP16 will operationalize the multilateral mechanism for the sharing of benefits from the use of digital sequencing information in genetic research.

“We are going to look at that. And I think it’s a very complex term and issue, but it is ultimately about how those industries, sectors and companies that use digital sequence information on genetic resources that are often located in the global south, but not exclusively, how they use it and how they pay for using it,” said Schomaker, noting that COP15 agreed to establish a multilateral mechanism and a Fund for DSI.

The fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of genetic resources is one of the three objectives of the CDB, including the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use of its components. Target 18 of the CBD seeks to reduce harmful incentives by at least USD 500 billion per year by 2030, money that could be channelled to halting biodiversity loss.

The World Resources Institute (WRI), in a position paper, has urged COP16 to provide more finance and incentives to support nature and biodiversity goals.

There is currently a USD 700 billion gap between annual funding for nature and what’s needed by 2030 to protect and restore ecosystems, the WRI said, noting that “many of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems—and biggest carbon sinks—are in developing countries that cannot save them without far more financial support.”

The WRI commented that bringing in more private sector finance will require incentives, which can come from policy and regulation as well as market-based strategies to make investments in nature more attractive.

But this should not substitute for shifting harmful subsidies and delivering international public finance to the countries that need it most, WRI argued.

As the world scrambles to stop biodiversity loss by 2030, the upcoming COP16 discussions could be pivotal in ensuring that Africa finally benefits from its own genetic wealth.

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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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David Obura, IPBES chair, has had a life-long career studying coral reefs and is the co-founder of CORDIO East Africa, a non-profit organization that conducts research, monitoring, and capacity building for corals and other marine life in mainland Africa and the Indian Ocean.

By Alison Kentish
SAINT LUCIA, Oct 10 2023 (IPS)

David Obura always knew that his life’s work would involve the natural world. As a child with a love of nature, he always knew he would become an ecologist. Growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, he recalls fondly that his mother would take the family camping at national parks. With these excursions came opportunities for hiking, mountain climbing, and exploration. The family events also took him to one of the earth’s greatest wonders – the sea.

Two years of schooling on the west coast of Canada and a foray into scuba diving led Obura to begin making the connection between the sea and biology. It also led to a life-long career studying coral reefs and co-founding CORDIO East Africa, a non-profit organization that conducts research, monitoring, and capacity building for corals and other marine life in mainland Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Obura’s expertise and interest in peoples’ livelihoods from nature led him to make contributions to major international environmental assessments by scientific organizations like the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Since 2012, IPBES has been bringing together leading biodiversity scientists, experts and knowledge-holders, producing reports that provide evidence and options for action on vital issues such as pollination and food production, land degradation and restoration, the sustainable use of wild species, and most recently, invasive alien species.

In early September 2023, Obura, who has been part of three IPBES assessments, made the move from the science and research side of the body to the policy side when he became IPBES’ first Chair from the African continent.

IPS spoke to Obura about the shift, the dual crisis of biodiversity and climate change, as well as his hopes for his three-year term.

==================
IPS: You’re wearing a new hat – IPBES Chair. How have things changed?

Obura: The reason I was attracted to doing assessments is because we are hoping that they will help provide solutions that stakeholders, governments and other actors are looking for, to understand how to act sustainably and how to build sustainable practices into what they do.

So, I have always been on that side of the aisle, scientists trying to bring a positive influence on policy. In some ways that can be very frustrating because all we can do is present the evidence, but it is really up to the policy and decision makers to choose what to do based on that information and other information that they have.

Often other things have a higher importance in their minds than science does, but we are trying to change that.

IPS: As Chair of IPBES, what are some of the areas that you would like to see receive urgent attention?

Obura: When the opportunity to run for the Chair of IPBES came up, it was a surprise because I had not planned to stand, particularly as I have always been on the research side of things. I came to understand, however, through discussion with colleagues, that in the informal rotation of Chairs at IPBES, which is still a very young organisation, Africa and Eastern Europe had not yet held that position. There was a really strong case for a good African candidate and there were many countries involved. There was also a desire for someone with a strong science background, like mine, as opposed to a purely policy perspective.

For me, it’s a somewhat unfamiliar role that I am still learning to fully navigate. There are, of course, limitations on the role of Chair. I am there mainly to represent the interests and mandates agreed by our member State, and to help steer the strongest-possible strengthening of the science-policy interface. Part of this is to ensure that the key messages and options for action of the IPBES Reports are taken up and have even wider impact around the world.

I also hope to increase the role that science plays to inform decision-making in all countries.

In broader communications and outreach, I want us to reach out to a broad spectrum of decision-makers, also in the corporate sector, to help them to make sustainable, tangible changes for people and nature.

One key goal is to promote the findings and options for action of past IPBES Assessments, and to further leverage the potential that they have to transform actions around the world.

IPS: In the face of the climate and biodiversity crises, the research community has been clamouring for more funding and attention to ocean-based solutions. This is an area that you have devoted decades to. What do you think can be done to put those solutions in the spotlight?

Obura: There is a lot still to be done. We really have reached planetary limits and I think interest in oceans is rising because we have very dramatically reached the limits of land.

What the world needs to understand is how strongly nature and natural systems, even when highly altered such as agricultural systems, support people and economies very tangibly. It’s the same with the ocean. It is therefore important for companies and businesses, for instance, to understand how dependent they and we are on these natural systems, in order to invest what’s needed to support the management necessary to keep these systems intact. Until we get to that understanding, we will not value nature and natural systems as much as we should.

IPS: Based on your personal research on coral reefs, does the state of coral provide a good window into what’s happening with climate change, and does it make an even more urgent argument for conservation?

Obura: Sadly, yes, it does. Coral reefs are really at the forefront of climate-impacted ecosystems because they are one of the most sensitive. Corals are a quite delicate symbiosis between the coral animal and single-celled plant cells within their tissue. They are tied to the environmental conditions that they have lived and evolved in and are extremely sensitive to temperature extremes. They are showing us how badly ecosystems can be degraded by climate change, particularly when combined with pollution, overfishing, extraction and local threats. Coral reefs are showing us some of the worst impacts that we can have on ecosystems and how quickly impacts can cascade.

In terms of my own focus on coral reefs, my Ph.D. in the early 1990s was on sedimentation impacts on reefs in Kenya, but from a university in the United States. When I was done and had returned to Kenya, the first global climate event on coral reefs drew the world’s attention in 1998. I have been looking at climate impacts ever since because they are increasingly trumping everything else.

IPS: IPBES has done some ground-breaking work, including a landmark collaboration with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which took a joint approach to climate change and biodiversity loss. What kind of support is needed to roll out initiatives like this?

Obura: That particular collaboration emerged rapidly due to the emergence of this as a real, fundamental problem – recognizing that we cannot deal with the biodiversity and climate crises separately. The challenge was because that was a workshop report, rather than a full, multi-year government-approved assessment, so it does not carry as much weight as a full assessment. Following it, we have held discussions with the IPCC for further collaboration to bring even closer alignment between the two bodies. There was a decision made at the recent session of the IPBES Plenary, and it will certainly be one of my priorities to advance that process.

I also believe that the Sustainable Development Goals provide an incredibly powerful policy framework for us to use. In that respect, biodiversity is directly in two of the SDGs – life on land and life underwater – and climate change is has its own goal. But nature underpins all the goals, and ensuring this support to each goal is assured is vital for achieving the goals together. From food production to human health and One Health, the work of IPBES is vital in helping decision-makers implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

IPS: IPBES is built on strong science and crucial research. How important is data and knowledge sharing?

Obura: Expanding the scope of open data and data sharing is critical. We have seen that very clearly in meteorological and weather services, because most primary data collected by any country, or any group are merged into common systems so that we can have amazing weather prediction happening now – all on the basis of open data. So, I think in the biodiversity fields, the more we can open up data and share them, the better the decisions we can make. Unfortunately, it is much more complicated with biodiversity – the data are much more diverse, often harder to obtain and until now, data have been tied up in the work of scientists, our publications and research projects.

I think we need to get to a space where data are seen as a public good. Of course, scientists and individual entities need to work on their priorities, but sharing data needs to come forward as an overarching priority. The more we can do that, the better we will be able to manage the existing crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

IPS: Any closing thoughts on your new role?

Obura: It is a great honour to be in this position, realising that the critical challenge that we have on the planet is really one of equity among countries. IPBES has very strong principles on this through various Assessments that it has done. So, I really want to reinforce that cooperation among countries globally. We need equity across knowledge and decision-making, and this is something that I would like to bring to IPBES, especially coming from Africa.

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Wild boar female (Susscrofa) walking on mud beside a river with her piglets. The wild boar is an invasive Alien Species in countries such as South Africa, Vanuatu, and Uruguay. Credit: Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO AND BONN, Sep 4 2023 (IPS)

Mango farmer Eufria Nyadome used to earn USD 60 from selling a 20-litre bucket of fresh mangoes and now can barely make USD 20 even though her mango trees are giving a good yield. She is throwing away buckets of rotten mangoes.

Nyadome, from Mhondiwa Village in Ward 9 Murehwa District of Zimbabwe, has lost her income to an invasive Oriental fruit fly all the way from Asia. The fruit fly is classified as an invasive alien species, flagged by scientists as one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss around the world.  Invasive alien species could be plants, animals or microorganisms that are introduced intentionally or unintentionally into areas where they are not native.

The Oriental fruit fly is one of the 3,500 harmful invasive alien species that a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds are seriously threatening nature, nature’s contributions to people and good quality of life.

Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control.

According to the Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control launched by IPBES this week, more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. The report finds 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.

From the European shore crab (Carcinus maenas), Lantana (Lantana camera), the Fall Army Worm, (Spodoptera frugiperda), Nile Perch (Lates niloticus) to the water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes), alien species invasive species have changed and destroyed global biodiversity and ecosystems, causing harm to global economies, human health and wellbeing as well as impacting on food and nutrition security.

Scientists say the conservative estimate of global economic costs is now rising at unprecedented rates.

“Invasive alien species are a major threat to biodiversity and can cause irreversible damage to nature, including local and global species extinctions, and also threaten human wellbeing,” said Helen Roy, co-chair of the assessment report.

In 2019, the IPBES Global Assessment Report found that invasive alien species are one of the five most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss – alongside changes in land- and sea use, direct exploitation of species, climate change and pollution.

Aliens Are Coming

The report warned of increasing invasive alien species worldwide on the back of a growing global economy, intensified and expanded land- and sea-use change combined with demographic changes.

Even without the introduction of new alien species, already established alien species will continue to expand their ranges and spread to new countries and regions, the report said, noting that climate change will make the situation even worse.

“What we demonstrated in this assessment is that the number of alien species is increasing by a huge margin where 200 invasive alien species a year get into an ecosystem; if nothing is done, these numbers are going to increase dramatically and impact food security and human health,” Sebataolo Rahlao, a Coordinating Lead Author of the report, told IPS in an interview.

Boat crossing a river with water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes). This is an Invasive Alien Species in countries such as Egypt, Kenya, South Korea, and Mexico. Credit: CANVA

“We are also saying there are interactions with global changes, including climate change and pollution, which all increase the likelihood of invasive alien species increasing in particular areas. For example, climate change has provided opportunities for invasive alien species to thrive like the river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh) trees in South Africa have increased because their suitable habitat has increased due to climate change.”

While the IPBES experts confirm that there are insufficient measures to tackle these challenges of invasive alien species, with only 17 per cent of countries with national laws or regulations specifically addressing invasive alien species, effective management and more integrated approaches were available solutions.

An invasive Oriental fruit fly on an unripe mango. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“The good news is that, for almost every context and situation, there are management tools, governance options and targeted actions that really work,” co-chair of the Assessment chair Anibal Pauchard said, noting that prevention was the best and most cost-effective option in addition to eradication, containment, and control of invasive alien species.

Commenting on the report, Inger Andersen, Executive Director United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said humanity has been moving species around the world for centuries, but when imported species run rampant and unbalance local ecosystems, indigenous biodiversity suffers.

“As a result, invasive species have become one of the five horsemen of the biodiversity apocalypse that is riding down harder and faster upon the world,” Andersen said in a statement, adding, “While the other four horsemen – changing land- and sea use, over-exploitation, climate change and pollution – are relatively well understood, knowledge gaps remain around invasive species.

Impacts on society of alien species. Credit: IPBES

Fighting the Aliens

In Zimbabwe, farmers have taken the fight to the alien invasive species.

“We learnt about the fruit fly that was attacking our mangoes, and we were trained on how to control it from ruining our fruit,” said Nyadome, who is one of 1200 smallholder farmers in the Murehwa District who was trained in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices four years ago. IPM involves the use of various pest management practices which are friendly to humans, animals, and the environment.

Local people in Chile fight forest fires where a mix of invasive alien species, including shrubs and trees, increase fire intensity and extent. Credit: Guillermo Roberto Salgado Sanchez

The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), based in Nairobi, Kenya, together with various donor agencies and partners, developed an IPM package to manage the invasive fruit fly, which has been promoted under the Alien Invasive Fruit Fly project, a multi-stakeholder initiative under The Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund (CultiAF) by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

ICIPE developed bio-based holistic solutions to address the fly problem in East and Southern Africa, such as the male-annihilation technique, which involves mass trapping the male fruit flies using attractants combined with insecticide and the use of “bait stations” — small plastic containers that hold food bait for fruit flies which has an insecticide that kills the flies.

“There is a 100 per cent loss in fruit yields when the fruit fly is not controlled, but we have seen that for those farmers who consistently used the IPM package, the fruit fly damage has been reduced, and farmers in most cases have had mango fruit yields of up to 70 per cent,”  said Shepard Ndlela, an Entomologist with ICIPE and Project manager of the Invasive Fruit Fly project.

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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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Credit: Mila Drumeva / iStock

By Arun Agrawal, Lucas Garibaldi, and Karen O'Brien
BONN, Germany, Jul 4 2023 (IPS)

To most people, ‘transformative change’ is an abstract academic catchphrase. But transformative change is far more than that. It is the foundational response necessary to address the global crisis of biodiversity loss that threatens the wellbeing of every person in every community – and every species in every region.

Species of plants and animals around the world are going extinct at a rate at least tens to hundreds of times greater than the average over the past 10 million years. A million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction. Seventy five percent of our global land surface and 66% of the ocean area has been significantly altered by human activity. Rapid increases in greenhouse gas emissions, consumption patterns and an extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small minority are profoundly damaging nature’s contributions to people. They threaten the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. We are on the path towards a disastrous future.

But altering course to achieve a sustainable, just, and prosperous world is possible. Getting to such a world requires different choices. It requires transformative change. There is broad scientific consensus that justice and equity are integrally connected with sustainability. This means that halting and reversing biodiversity loss will not be accomplished by small, slow, incremental changes. Deep, structural, and rapid changes, are necessary and possible. They will entail both individual and collective action. They will span behavioural, social, cultural, economic, institutional, technical and technological dimensions.

To succeed, transformative change must begin now. Shifts towards greater justice, equity and sustainability require clear evidence on how transformative change comes about – especially how it can lead to a fairer distribution of resources, capacities and benefits for socially, economically and politically disadvantaged and marginalised groups. This knowledge exists. Evidence and strategies that translate knowledge about transformations into actions for transformations are needed. The transformative change assessment aims to pinpoint the necessary evidence and strategies.

Representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, tasked the world’s leading experts to undertake a thematic assessment of transformative change over more than four years. The aim is to better understand and identify the specific elements of human society that can be leveraged to bring about transformative change for the conservation, restoration, and wise use of biodiversity, taking into account broader social and economic goals in the context of sustainable development.

The transformative change assessment process is now well advanced. Due to be considered by IPBES member States in 2024, and published thereafter, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment Report will provide the knowledge and policy options to help governments, decision-makers, organisations and even individuals to better understand and act to address the drivers of change that link biodiversity loss with social, economic, political and cultural dimensions.

The report will highlight specific actionable options to meet the targets of the newly adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The assessment draws on more than 10,000 sources – including scientific publications, government data, as well as vital indigenous and local knowledge. It explores diverse case studies of historical transformations and examines quantitative evidence on past and ongoing transformations. It investigates the likely trajectories of change into the future and how to turn away from the catastrophic path on which we are currently marching. This evidence will allow the assessment and its audiences to pinpoint the drivers and consequences of transformations, avoid potential pitfalls to ensure nature-positive changes, and propel the planet towards sustainability and wellbeing.

Transformative change is not only an environmental issue. It is also a social, economic and justice issue. Creating an equitable world that recognizes the fundamental interdependence of human well-being and the health of the natural world is simultaneously about creating a world that is sustainable, resilient and prosperous for all people and all nature.

About the Authors:

Dr. Arun Agrawal is a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, USA.

Dr. Karen O’Brien is a professor at the University of Oslo, Norway.

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Excerpt:

Mangroves in Tai O, Hong Kong. Coastal wetland protection and restoration is an example of the kind of multifunctional solution that is needed to address multiple global crises together. Credit: Chunyip Wong / iStock

By Paula Harrison, Pamela McElwee and David Obura
BONN, Mar 2 2023 (IPS)

When global crises are interlinked, they overlap and compound each other. In such cases, the most effective solutions are those that work at the nexus of all these challenges.

In September, almost every Government on Earth will gather at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York to take stock at the halfway mark of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

Despite some progress, global development efforts have been hamstrung by unprecedented environmental, social and economic crises, in particular biodiversity loss and climate change, compounded of course by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tackling these interlinked challenges separately risks creating situations even more damaging to people and communities around the world, and exacerbates the already high risk of not meeting the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This is especially true because the myriad drivers of risk and damage affect many different sectors at once, across scales from local to global, and can result in negative impacts being compounded. For example, when demands for food and timber combine with the effects of pollution and climate change, they can decimate already degraded ecosystems, driving species to extinction and severely reducing nature’s contributions to people.

The global food system offers another example of this negative spiral of interlocking crises – where food that is produced unsustainably leads to water overconsumption and waste, pollution, increased health risks and loss of biodiversity. It also leads to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

Yet policies often treat each of these global threats in isolation, resulting in separate, uncoordinated actions that typically address only one of the root causes and fail to take advantage of the many potential solution synergies. In the worst cases, actions taken on one challenge directly undermine those needed to tackle another because they fail to account for trade-offs, resulting in unintended consequences, or the impacts being externalised, as someone else’s problem.

This is why almost 140 Governments turned to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – requesting IPBES to undertake a major multiyear assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health in the context of the rapidly-changing climate. This ‘Nexus Assessment’ is among the most complex and important expert assessments ever undertaken – crossing key biophysical domains of climate and biodiversity and elements central to human wellbeing like food, water and health. It will also address how interactions are affected by energy, pollution, conflict and other socio-political challenges.

To fully address this ‘nexus’, the assessment is considering interactions across scales, geographic regions and ecosystems. It also covers past, present and future trends in these interlinkages. And, most importantly, it will offer concrete options for responses to the crises that address the interactions of risk and damage jointly and equitably – providing a vital set of possible solutions for the more sustainable future we want for people and our planet.

One example of the mutifunctional solutions that will be explored is nature-based solutions – such as coastal wetland protection and restoration. When coastal wetland ecosystems are healthy – whether conserved or where necessary, restored – they are a refuge and habitat for biodiversity, improving fish stocks for greater food security and contributing to improve human health and wellbeing. They can also sequester carbon, helping to mitigate climate change, and protect adjacent communities and settlements from flooding and sea level rise.

To develop and implement these kinds of multi-functional solutions, responses for dealing with the major global crises need to be better coordinated, integrated, and made more synergistic across sectors, both public and private. Decision-makers at all levels need better evidence and knowledge to implement such solutions.

Work on the nexus assessment began in 2021 – with the final report expected to be considered and adopted by IPBES member States in 2024. A majority of the 170 expert authors and review editors from around the world are meeting in March in the Kruger National Park in South Africa to further strengthen the draft report, responding to the many thousands of comments received during a first external review period.

The assessment will also include evidence and expertise contributed by indigenous peoples and local communities – whose rich and varied direct experiences and knowledge systems that consider humans and nature as an interconnected whole have embodied a nexus approach for generations.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the recently-agreed Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework provide the roadmaps for tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. The IPBES nexus assessment will offer policymakers a practical guide to bridge the vital interlinkages across the two challenges, to other relevant frameworks, and link to the sustainable development agenda.

For more information about IPBES or about the ongoing progress on the nexus assessment, go to www.ipbes.net or follow @ipbes on social media.

Prof. Paula Harrison is a Principal Natural Capital Scientist and Professor of Land and Water Modelling at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, United Kingdom.

Dr. David Obura is a Founding Director of CORDIO (Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean) East Africa, Kenya.

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Researcher, Billy Offland (left), filming a documentary on biodiversity in Kashmir. Credit: Billy Offland

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Dec 19 2022 (IPS)

Billy Offland (21), a British sustainability student, went on a two-year ‘World Conservation Journey’ to bring attention to the biodiversity crisis as the world seeks a deal to protect nature.

Offland, a BSc Sustainability and Environmental Management student at the University of Leeds, was jolted into taking a solo research trip after reading the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment report highlighting the perilous state of the world’s biodiversity. The IPBES assessment notes that more than one million species of plants and animals face extinction more than ever before in human history.

Getting up and taking action is always a big decision. There’s no easy way of starting your journey into activism or ‘actionism’ – changing a big part of your life for something you believe in.

“It took something as ground-breaking as the IPBES Global Assessment for me – but really, as soon as I read it, I knew I had to do something,” Offland told IPS in an interview from Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, where he is making the first foreign film about the battle for beekeepers to continue producing medicinal honey as the impacts of climate change threaten to wash away their pot of gold.

“The scale of the report is unlike anything else and contains messages which defy time. I always saw it as a culmination of everything I had learnt, discovered, and been told in my previous 22 years, including (completing a) degree in sustainability and environmental management. It laid it all bare.”

Offland said the grim narrative of the IPBES assessment left him questioning why people are unaware of this impending catastrophe and why it was not front-page news.

“In my eyes, the best thing about this report was that it came from the knowledge of hundreds of not just scientists and researchers but included, for the first time ever, the traditional knowledge of communities all around the world,” said Offland, who has now visited 196 countries worldwide. He plans to visit Eritrea as the final country of his sustainability tour.

“The most important thing I’ve learnt is that our global nature system is being destroyed by the actions of the majority of humans, and this has terrible consequences for nature – with it being predicted that a million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. This will also bring severe negative consequences for the livelihoods and wellbeing of so many people across the globe.”

Offland’s response to the biodiversity crisis, signalled by the IPBES Global Assessment, underscores the power that scientific research has to highlight the nature crisis and to mobilise and motivate real action by  individuals and organisations to bring our world back from the brink.

The Global Assessment also found that the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mostly since 1900. More than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 percent being threatened.

It gets worse. The assessment further found that at least 680 vertebrate species had been driven to extinction since the 16th century. More than 9 percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals used for food and agriculture had become extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more species still threatened.

The work of IPBES has also influenced policy change across the world. Following the discussions and agreement at the BES-Net Anglophone Africa Regional Trialogue, policy, science and practice sector representatives in Nigeria, for example, convened to refine a two-year strategic action plan for pollinator-friendly land degradation neutrality. This was a means to act on the IPBES thematic assessments on pollinators and land restoration.

The authors built on the earlier findings of the IPBES Regional Assessment Report for Africa to show what is changing in biodiversity and ecosystem services on the African continent. They also identified future pathways and options for an African continent where long-term development objectives are recognised as inseparably connected to conserving the region’s rich biocultural heritage.

As another direct impact of IPBES work, taking note of the urgency of the Global Assessment, 30 leading South African businesses teamed up with World Wide Fund South Africa and the Wildlife Trust (EWT) to undertake biodiversity valuation assessments to determine how to cost-effectively mainstream biodiversity into their strategies and practices.

The businesses indicated that given the key findings of the IPBES report, “there was, ‘more than ever’, a need for them to step up their biodiversity game.”

These are just some of many examples of governments, businesses, practitioners and individuals who took biodiversity science to heart and set out to make a difference. To document the impact of its work, IPBES developed its own Impact Tracking Database (TRACK) five years ago. It is a crowd-sourced tool that keeps track of, for example, new or changed laws, regulations, policy commitments, investments, research techniques, and more, that were inspired by the scientific reports published by the platform.

Rob Spaull, Head of Communications at IPBES, explains that IPBES realised it could not comprehensively monitor impacts globally.

“So, we decided to create an indicative list of these impacts whenever we found out about them,” Spaull said. He notes that the TRACK is a fully public database that can be used by anybody who wants to know about what kind of impacts IPBES has had or to submit an example of an IPBES impact themselves.

“The idea behind wanting to make it public and as searchable is that we want to give everybody interested in IPBES a chance to tell stories about the work that we do and the impact that we are having, but we want them to be able to find stories that are as closely related to their own priorities as possible,” Spaull tells IPS.

TRACK to date has almost 500 different specific examples of impact from every region and most countries and every kind of scale, including the private sector.

“TRACK is a really valuable asset that, we think, shows how science can have a very direct impact and that it does not need to be restricted to scientific publications that may end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. It can take a little time for science to result in concrete change, but thanks to the TRACK database we can trace the impact over time,” said Spaull.

This in itself is great news for the scientists who volunteer years of their time to work on IPBES assessments, but it can also be used to bring about even more change: Spaull added that member States had told IPBES they had used the examples collected in TRACK when advocating to their ministries and government organisations about the importance of IPBES in highlighting the science behind biodiversity issues worldwide, a strategy that can ultimately bring about even more support for biodiversity science.

TRACK is a fully public database that can be used by anybody who wants to know about what kind of impacts IPBES has had or to submit an example of an IPBES impact themselves. This includes 500 different specific examples of impact from every region and most countries and every kind of scale, including the private sector. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

At the COP15 Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said that the destruction of biodiversity and nature has come at a huge price for humanity.

“Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction… with a million species at risk of disappearing forever,” said Guterres, noting that climate action and biodiversity protection were two sides of the same coin.

“It’s time for the world to adopt an ambitious biodiversity framework — a true peace pact with nature — to deliver a green, healthy future for all.”

IPBES science can be found in many places, such as in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework that is being discussed at the COP.

What does Offland make of the current global action to save biodiversity at COP15 in Montreal?

“There’s no doubt for me that we’re making progress,” Offland told IPS, adding, “The worry is that it’s not the transformative change that we need to see. Often the biodiversity crisis is subjugated under the need for climate action, but recent work noticeably by IPBES and the IPCC seeks to reconcile the two.”

Offland has a vision for a summit where biodiversity takes an equal level of priority.

“I would quite like to see an intermediary COP for biodiversity and climate change together, recognising the importance of treating both together and not in silos and, therefore, giving the biodiversity crisis the priority it requires across every country in the world.”

Meanwhile, it is hopeful that biodiversity science will continue to make an impact at different scales, whether it’s on the global scale of a COP or on the individual scale as with Offland himself. Truly transformative change will need to occur at all levels of society.

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Andrew Gonzalez, co-chair of GEO BON speaking to decision makers at the Convention of Biological Diversity’s “Science Day” in Montreal. Credit: Juliet Morrison/IPS

By Juliet Morrison
Montreal, Dec 7 2022 (IPS)

Policymakers were encouraged to look at the economic and social aspects with the environmental elements of biodiversity losses to meet the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) targets.

Decision-makers gathered on the opening day of the 15th UN Biodiversity Convention for a “Science Day” to learn about the science underpinning the goals and targets of the post-2020 GBF. Held just before COP15’s opening ceremony, the event allowed attendees to hear from experts about the implications of the biodiversity issues under negotiation.

Opening the event, David Cooper, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, underscored the importance of scientific understanding for informing COP15 negotiations.

“We have seen increasing interest by the parties to get good scientific advice. The scientific community is super important to clarify some of the concepts and see how we can produce a framework where actions, targets are coherent with goals.”

In the first half of the workshop, scientists discussed findings from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reports and their relevance for the COP15 post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. A common thread throughout the presentations was the need for transformative change in how policymakers tackled biodiversity.

Sandra Díaz, Assessment Co-Chair of IPBES’s Global Assessment Report on Biological and Ecosystems Services, stressed the importance of focusing on the economic and social aspects of biodiversity loss—in addition to environmental elements—for transformative change to occur.

“Solutions that target only one of these elements, just nature or just drivers [of biological diversity loss], are not going to be enough. What is needed is for the whole transformative change, fundamental system-change across these ecological, social, and environmental actions,” Díaz said.

Mike Christie, Assessment Co-Chair of the Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature, highlighted that a total shift in societal values was also needed to protect biodiversity.

He said that society’s over-emphasis on material and individual gain has resulted in a devaluation of nature.

“We are currently focused on a narrow set of values that are market values—think, “I buy, you sell. That’s leading us to an unsustainable path. If we want true transformative change, we need to change societal norms; we need to change institutions and make sure we are sustainable in terms of achieving the outcomes.”

Christie added that the insights IPBES developed on considering diverse values in decision-making could support the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework as they underscore the benefits of stakeholder involvement and addressing power dynamics.

Among those identified as key stakeholders in biodiversity issues were Indigenous Peoples. Marla Emery, Co-Chair of the Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, explained that their use of wild species through hunting, gathering, and logging helps maintain high biodiversity.

She emphasized that this was because of Indigenous Peoples’ unique orientation toward nature.

“The practices of Indigenous peoples and local communities are grounded in knowledge and worldviews. They are diverse […], but they have something in common with regards to uses of wild species and the relationships of people and other parts of nature, and that is a focus, a prioritization on respect, reciprocity, and responsibility in all those engagements.”

Scientists also discussed COP15’s monitoring framework, which is being developed alongside its goals and targets. They highlighted certain issues in the drafted framework, which included gaps in national capacity for certain indicators and a need for the additional data collection on biodiversity.

Andy Gonzales, Co-Chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (Geo Bon), outlined several pivotal steps to make the monitoring framework more effective. These included greater investment in biodiversity monitoring and knowledge sharing across borders. He noted that species records currently cover less than 7 percent of the world’s surface, and most of this data is from North America and Europe.

“Biodiversity change does not recognize borders, so if we are to understand detection and attribution of causes and drivers, we need to be working across borders to achieve a regional and global perspective on change.”

Throughout the workshop, scientists urged decision-makers to listen to their findings about biodiversity loss and act during COP15.

“The science is there. There is no excuse for ignoring the science,” Christie said, summing up his remarks. “It’s over to you as the decision-makers in the convention to listen to the science. Embed some of our ideas that we have left you within the global biodiversity convention so we can actually address the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis […]  and ensure a sustainable future.”

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Measures to limit Bluefin Tuna fishing including limiting fishing seasons, increase in minimum catch size and quotas led to success in rebuilding of fish populations. Credit: Tom Puchner/Flickr

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Dec 6 2022 (IPS)

The Atlantic bluefin tuna is among the largest, fastest, and most beautifully colored of all the world’s fish species. They can measure more than 10 feet in length, weigh over 700 kilograms, and can live longer than 30 years. With their metallic blue coloring on top and shimmering silver-white on the bottom, the giant bony fish is a sight to behold.

But humanity’s interactions with the Atlantic Bluefin tuna have not always been sustainable. Highly migratory and warm-blooded, every year, they swim to the tropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea to reproduce, making them more accessible to fishermen.

The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, released in July 2022, offers important perspectives on the global biodiversity crisis and approaches to the use of wild species that can support the protection and restoration of such species.

IPBES research shows that while 50,000 wild species currently help to meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration, a million species of plants and animals face extinction, with far-reaching consequences.

Approved by representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES in Bonn, Germany, the report makes reference to a number of endangered wild species, highlighting challenges that undermine their sustainable use, providing best practices and a feasible path forward based on the most updated scientific knowledge.

With regards to the Atlantic bluefin tuna, the IPBES report stresses that the species has been sustainably exploited for two millennia by various traditional fisheries. As with many other fish stocks worldwide, the development of modern and more industrial fisheries occurred after the Second World War in both the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea and rapidly overtook the traditional fisheries.

The report further shows how the rise of the sashimi market in the 1980s brought attention to a strong demand for fresh Atlantic bluefin tuna from Japan. During this time, there was already overfishing of the southern bluefin tuna stock, which was, until then, the main source of fish tuna for the Japanese market.

When the species became a highly sought-after delicacy for sushi and sashimi in Asia, the value of Atlantic bluefin tuna increased, and the species was characterized in the media as being worth its own weight in gold, as shown by the annual New Year’s auction at the Tsukiji Fish Market, where a single bluefin tuna could be sold for up to $3 million.”

Driven by these high prices, fishermen deployed even more refined techniques to catch the delicious giant and to do so in even larger numbers due to the use of advanced longline vessels.

Conservationists were alarmed, not least because the large bony fish has a voracious appetite and is a top predator in the marine food chain, which is critical in maintaining a balance in the ocean environment.

The overcapacity of fishing vessels, combined with illegal fishing practices, brought the population of the Atlantic giant to dangerously low levels.

Factors such as the high value of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, coupled with insufficient enforcement of existing rules and regulations, and pursuit of short-term profits and economic growth, took precedence over conservation, creating troubled waters for this iconic species.

The IPBES report found that the severe and uncontrolled “overcapacity also due to deficient governance at both international and national levels generated a critical overexploitation of the resource and a severe problem of illegal catch. ”

The growing value of Atlantic bluefin tuna has led to a sharp increase in the fishing efficiency and capacity of various fleets, as well as the entrance of new storage technologies and farming practices.

“The management failure of Atlantic bluefin tuna at that time was partly due to the multilateral nature of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which is the regional fisheries organization that has in charge to monitor and manage tuna and tuna-like species of the Atlantic Ocean, and to a decision-making process based on consensus.”

Further, conflicts of interest between the numerous countries that fished Atlantic bluefin tuna impeded strong decision-making, especially in limiting catches. Against this backdrop, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas’ scientific body alerted the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas management body about critical Atlantic bluefin tuna stock status in the 1990s.

However, the IPBES report finds that “the scientific advice had, at that time, little weight against fisheries lobbies, which were most influential at maintaining high catch levels. In particular, questioning the Atlantic bluefin tuna scientific advice through the issue of uncertainty has been commonly used by different lobbies that wished to push their own agendas.”

During the 2000s, environmental NGOs managed to call the attention of the public to the poor stock status of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Consequently, managers began to pay more attention to scientific advice and implemented a first rebuilding plan in 2007, which was reinforced in the following years.

The final Atlantic bluefin tuna rebuilding plan was ambitious, as it included the reduction of the fishing season for the main fleets, an increase in the minimum catch size, new tools to monitor and control fishing activities, and a reduction of fishing capacity and of the annual quota.

Strictly enforced, these measures proved to be successful: They rapidly led to the rebuilding of the population. The latest analyses clearly show that today Atlantic bluefin tuna is not overfished anymore; the stock size is, in fact, increasing.

The IPBES report concludes that the Atlantic bluefin tuna case clearly shows that effective management of international fisheries that exploit highly valuable species that have been overexploited for decades is possible when there is strong political will.

It also shows that “uncertainty that is inherent to any scientific advice is also a source of misunderstanding, sometimes manipulation, between scientists and managers for whom uncertainty is often taken to mean poor advice.”

“Furthermore, these uncertainties can be weaponized by powerful political lobbies, whether intentionally or not, to advance a particular cause. Like in all scientific fields, fisheries scientists cannot provide certainties, but only probabilities and sometimes a consensual interpretation.”

Against this backdrop, more science is needed to deliver less uncertainty and better management recommendations, as this is a prerequisite to long-term sustainable use of species of plants and animals.

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A blue sea star (Linckia laevigata) photographed on a largely dead coral reef on the Coral Coast on Fiji's largest island Viti Levu. IPBES estimates that nearly one-third of reefs are threatened with extinction. Credit: Tom Vierus / Climate Visuals

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 30 2022 (IPS)

Up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction – many within decades – this includes nearly one-third of reef-forming corals, shark relatives, and marine mammals. Half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests, and 85% of wetlands that were present at the beginning of the 18^th century had been lost by the year 2000, with the loss of wetlands considered to be happening three times faster, in percentage terms, than forest loss.

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

Speaking to IPS ahead of UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) about the urgent need to accelerate measures to stop biodiversity loss, Dr Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, says the loss we hear about is just the tip of the iceberg.

“In 2019, IPBES alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million, now face extinction, many within decades. A third of coral reefs are threatened with extinction. Nature is being deteriorated at a rate and scale that is unprecedented in human history,” she cautions.

She said that the very first reason to conserve and use biodiversity sustainably is because this is the right thing to do from a moral and ethical standpoint, “it should not be to the purview of one species, the human species, to destroy the non-human species on our shared planet. But an important more selfish second reason is that conserving and using biodiversity sustainably are also a matter of ensuring human existence and good quality of life.”

Biodiversity is central to human development, and its conservation is critical to people in every corner of the world. Fifty thousand wild species, according to IPBES, meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine, and inspiration.

One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking, and about 90 percent of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.

This is just part of the material contribution Larigauderie says biodiversity makes to humanity, along with innumerable non-material and regulating contributions such as maintaining the quality of air and soil, the control of emerging diseases and the pollination of crops.

Against this backdrop, Larigauderie says COP 15, which will be held in Montreal, Canada, December 7-19, sets the stage for a new Global Biodiversity Framework, hoped to be a quantifiable and well-resourced plan that is meant to set the path to recovery of all life on Earth and the contributions it provides to people by 2030.

She speaks of the failed Aichi Biodiversity Targets 2011-2020, a strategic plan established to halt the loss of biodiversity and how none of the 20 targets agreed by governments for 2020 were fully achieved at the global level.

“COP15 is an opportunity to raise the bar—a renewal of the momentum of the ambitions for the global community. The most desirable outcome would be an agreement whose targets are supported by sufficient resources and quantified,” she emphasises.

For instance, Aichi target 11 called for the effective protection of 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas; now she says, “the bar is raised significantly in the new draft framework, to 30 percent to be protected by 2030. It is challenging but possible with adequate financial means.”

In addition to the 30%, measures need to be undertaken on the 70% which is not under protection. The text, therefore, includes targets to integrate biodiversity in key economic sectors, such as agriculture, fishing, and economic and financial systems, to decrease their impact on biodiversity.

IPBES research reveals that half of agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of forests. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“Agriculture represents one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss because it competes for land with nature, and because it pollutes nature. Governments could help farmers to transition to agroecological practices that are more respectful of nature,” she observes.

Science, she adds, can inform transitions to new sustainable pathways for agriculture, fishing, and food systems, among others, to help conserve and sustainably use biodiversity. Larigauderie stresses the great need to transition into these new pathways for the good of nature and people for present and future generations.

She also emphasises the need to support developing countries that are now expected to develop while protecting their biodiversity, unlike their more developed counterparts, who ensured their development by leveraging their natural resources.

Speaking about the just-concluded UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), Larigauderie said it is critical to recognise and act on the interlinkages between climate change and biodiversity loss. Research has established that climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss.

“It is very important for the climate change community to take biodiversity into account. The topic of biodiversity is still very low on the agenda of climate change discussions. Yet, we know there can never be long-term solutions for climate change without better treatment of nature,” she says.

“Moreover, some measures proposed to mitigate climate change are harmful to biodiversity, exacerbating ongoing biodiversity crisis and ultimately the climate change crisis.”

She says these measures can include growing biofuel crops, also known as energy crops, such as sugarcane and soybeans, on a large scale to avoid using fossil fuels. Initially, such crops were meant to be grown on marginal lands.

But with very few marginal lands left, pieces of natural ecosystems are being converted into farmland, often for short-term profit, which in turn does further harm to biodiversity.

Another example of a strategy to combat climate change at the expense of biodiversity, she says, can be tree planting schemes. Rather than working to reduce emissions, “people contribute money for tree planting schemes to offset their carbon footprint. People plant trees and continue to do business as usual.”

“Tree planting schemes can also cause social problems where indigenous people are displaced or ecological problems where trees are planted without factoring in ecological principles such as planting trees that require a lot of water in dry areas, causing serious water scarcity.”

Instead, it is important to implement solutions that take both crises into account and combat climate change and biodiversity loss together.

As governments from around the world gather at COP 15, it is a vital chance to step up for nature. Doing so will call on the global community to leverage the established post-2020 biodiversity framework. The outcome could well be a framework to transform society’s relationship with biodiversity, heal the planet and ensure a sustainable existence for humankind.

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IPBES’ Assessment Report on Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature Report tells of the successful campaign by the Niyamgiri Movement. Credit: Survival International

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Nov 23 2022 (IPS)

The Dongria Kondhs say they are the descendants of Niramraja, a mythical god-king who is believed to have created the Niyamgiri range of hills in Odisha, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal.

This indigenous community has worshipped the Niyamgiri Mountain and lived in the region, which spans over 250 square kilometres through the Raygada and Kalahandi districts of Odisha. Their survival is closely linked to the ecosystem integrity of Niyamgiri Mountain.

But in 2003, a socio-economic conflict of values erupted over the mythical sacred kingdom when Vedanta Resources – a UK-based mining giant – began to acquire land towards constructing an Aluminum refinery at the foot of the Niyamgiri Mountain. This did not require forest clearance.

Protests erupted immediately and intensified when it was revealed that Vendata also planned to acquire Niyamgiri Mountain and mine bauxite, a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. In 2004, the company sought approval to clear forest for a mine. Environmentalists moved to court.

Such conflict over short-term profits and economic growth vis-a-vis values that affected communities ascribe to their land came into sharp focus in July 2022 when IPBES released the Assessment Report on Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature.

IPBES provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people, as well as options and actions to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets.

In this regard, the Values Assessment responds to the need to support decision-makers in understanding and accounting for the wide range of nature’s values in policy decisions to address the current biodiversity crisis and to achieve the UN’s SDGs.

Approved by representatives of the 139 Member States of IPBES, the full report, released in October 2022, found a “dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions” and that “decisions based on a narrow set of market values of nature underpin the global biodiversity crisis.”

A global biodiversity crisis is increasingly placing economies, food security and livelihoods of people in every corner of the world at greater risk. For instance, IPBES alerted the world that a million species, out of an overall eight million, of plants and animals, now face extinction, many within decades. Today, the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.

According to IPBES, increased global gross domestic product drives increased use of natural resources, and “such extractive policies have created immediate loss of multiple nature values at different geographical and social scales, disproportionately affecting indigenous and local communities.”

The Niyamgiri case illustrates the power issues and value conflicts between economic development projects and indigenous peoples and local communities. Sixty-two tribal groups are found in Odisha, of which 13 are particularly vulnerable.

The Niramgiri Mountain contains approximately 75 million tonnes of bauxite. India is one of five countries that lead the production of bauxite in the global market, according to national data.

The Values Assessment report particularly highlights how the loss of nature’s values in pursuit of profits has led to a crossing of key planetary boundaries, accelerating the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Such loss was imminent, and the Odisha state government entered a memorandum of understanding with Vendata Resources.

A mining project would set in motion activities to turn an indigenous sacred mountain and the ancestral home of the vulnerable Dongria Kondhs and Kutia Kondhs, among other vulnerable people, into bauxite.

Equally important, the community maintains the Sal Forest because the community honours a taboo against cutting trees on Niyamgiri’s summit. Approximately 90 percent of the 660-hectare mining lease area, agreed upon between the Odisha state government and the mining company, was considered to be Sal Forest.

Resistance against the planned assault on nature was first led by the community with support from professional activists; this led to the birth of the Niyamgiri Movement, a social movement against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri mountains or indigenous sacred land.

In 2004, environmentalists petitioned India’s Supreme Court not to allow the mine permit, but the petition was unsuccessful. The decision was reversed in 2013 when the Court ordered that the Dongria Kondh’s right to worship their sacred mountain must be “protected and preserved”.

According to the court order, those with religious and cultural values associated with the area must be included in the decision-making process. A local referendum by affected villages unanimously rejected the mining project.

According to IPBES, “the Niyamgiri case includes a range of valuation approaches: the firm’s bottom-line considerations, cost-benefit analysis; focusing on instrumental values, portrayals of ecological (intrinsic) values, and evidence of (relational) cultural values of indigenous peoples.”

In this case, the power to make decisions influences which values were prioritised and which valuation methods were deemed appropriate. IPBES finds that the case also “exemplifies how different valuation logics succeed or fail in representing different life frames and sets of values.”

IPBES references the Life Framework of Values which links the richness of ways people experience and think of nature with the diverse ways nature matters. It shows why the natural world matters. People can live from, live in, live with or as nature.

Living ‘as’ nature characterises a oneness with nature and people. Living ‘with’ nature means living in accordance with nature and living ‘from’ nature prioritising benefits such as profits and economic growth from natural resources over the integrity of an ecosystem.

The first court decision largely prioritised economic development and emphasised industrialisation. A cost-benefit analysis focused on instrumental values such as employment income, infrastructure expenses, and profits in line with Vedanta’s interests.

Conservation activists, IPBES stresses, were grounded upon both the living ‘as’ and living ‘with’ nature frame. An intact Niyamgiri ecosystem is considered a core value, and activists highlighted the intersections between cultural and biodiversity values and the rights of local communities to define their livelihoods.

Overall, the activists managed to represent the cultural, spiritual and territorial values that were most important to local indigenous people and won the day in India’s Supreme Court. Today, the mythical kingdom of Niyamgiri Mountains remains under the control of the descendants of Niramraja, their god-king.

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It is no secret that humankind’s past actions have accelerated the deterioration of ecosystems, negatively impacting our economies, societies, health, and cultures. It is estimated that humans have altered over 97% of ecosystems worldwide, to date. One million species are currently threatened with extinction (IPBES). The writing on the wall is clear. Our planet is in crisis. The sobering reality is that if we continue on our current trajectory, biodiversity and the services it provides will continue to decline, jeopardizing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and our lives as we know them. The decline in biodiversity is expected to further accelerate unless effective action is taken to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss. These causes are often justified by societal values, norms and behaviors. Some examples include unsustainable production and consumption patterns, human population dynamics and trends, and technological innovation patterns.

Elizabeth Mrema

This has deemed this the decisive decade. This is because after this decade, once we move past 2030, the damage done to our planet will be beyond repair. That doesn’t give us much time but it does still give us a chance. This December in Montreal, Canada we will get that chance. It is likely our only chance. I can’t emphasize that enough. This December, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will bring world leaders together to address the biodiversity crisis at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15). Truth be told, the outcome of COP 15 will determine the trajectory of humankind on planet Earth.

The ultimate goal of COP 15 is to emerge with a plan, a roadmap to a sustainable future. We call it the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). The framework is currently being negotiated by Parties under the Convention on Biological Diversity and represents a historic opportunity to accelerate action on biodiversity at all levels. It aims to build on the outcomes of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets and achieve the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature. The draft framework, if adopted and implemented, will put biodiversity on a path to recovery before the end of this decade.

Why is it critical that the GBF is adopted and implemented? Because 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs (WWF UK). Because we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute (WWF LPR). Because an estimated 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines for their health care and some 70 per cent of drugs used for cancer are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature (IPBES). Because Ecosystem-based approaches (biodiversity) can provide up to 30% of the climate mitigation needed by 2030. Because monitored wildlife populations, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970 (WWF LPR). I could go on and on.

Some key targets within the draft framework include:

o Ensuring that at least 30 per cent globally of land areas and of sea areas are protected.
o Preventing or reducing the rate of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50%.
o Reducing nutrients lost to the environment by at least half, pesticides by at least two thirds, and eliminate discharge of plastic waste.
o Using ecosystem-based approaches to contribute to mitigation and adaptation to climate change and ensuring that all climate efforts avoid negative impacts on biodiversity.
o Redirecting, repurposing, reforming or eliminating incentives harmful for biodiversity in a just and equitable way, reducing them by at least $500 billion per year.
o Increasing financial resources from all sources to at least US$ 200 billion per year, including new, additional and effective financial resources, increasing by at least US$ 10 billion per year international financial flows to developing countries.

The post-2020 global biodiversity framework is not just important, it is critical. It will take a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach and it will take hard work and commitment; but we can do it. We need to act now to bend the curve to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. COP 15 will be a the most crucial and decisive step towards a better and more sustainable future for generations to come. This is our chance. It’s time to decide on a future.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, a national of the United Republic of Tanzania, is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity

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Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES, with Hoesung Lee, President of the IPCC. IPBES and the IPCC were joint winners of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022, which was dedicated to climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Oct 13 2022 (IPS)

IPBES’ assessment report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species, released in July 2022, painted a troubling picture of the ongoing global biodiversity crisis that could paralyse economies and endanger food security and livelihoods.

Earlier in February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) painted a similarly troubling picture: a warning that every tenth of a degree of additional warming could escalate threats to people, species, and ecosystems.

IPBES and IPCC both produce scientific knowledge, alert society to climate change and biodiversity loss, and inform decision-makers to make better choices for combatting climate change and the loss of biodiversity. In doing so, they provide tools to foster a low-carbon future, mitigate climate change’s negative effects, and promote a resilient society.

For their contribution to climate change adaptation and resilience building, IPBES and IPCC today (October 13, 2022) emerged winners of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022, which was dedicated to climate change.

“The decision to award the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity to both IPBES and the IPCC is a powerful statement confirming that the global loss of species, destruction of ecosystems, and degradation of nature’s contributions to people together represent a crisis not only of similar magnitude to that of climate change, but one which must be addressed with at least similar urgency,” said Anne Larigauderie, the Executive Secretary of IPBES who accepted the prize alongside Hoesung Lee, President of the IPCC.

“The unified message from both of our expert communities is that either we tackle and solve the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis together – or we will fail on both fronts.”

Additionally, Lee emphasised that science was “our most powerful instrument to tackle climate change, a clear and imminent threat to our wellbeing and livelihoods, the wellbeing of our planet and all of its species. For IPCC scientists, this prize is an important recognition and encouragement. For the decision-makers, it is another push for more decisive climate action.”

IPBES is an independent, intergovernmental body set up in 2012 with the objective of improving the interface between scientific knowledge and political decision-makers on questions around biodiversity, the protection of ecosystems, human wellbeing, and sustainability.

IPCC, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007, in conjunction with Al Gore, is a United Nations-affiliated organisation that fosters the production of scientific knowledge within the scope of evaluating the climate impacts of human actions and supporting governments with regard to their decision-making and the implementation of measures able to combat climate change.

Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, chaired the jury Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity 2022. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

The two entities – IPBES and IPCC – were selected out of 116 nominations from 41 nationalities spanning five continents. Angela Merkel, former Chancellor of Germany, chaired the jury with vice-chair Miguel Bastos Araújo (Geographer, Pessoa Award 2018).

Merkel attended the prizegiving, as did António Feijó, President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that introduced the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity in 2020.

The focus on climate change, Feijó explained, was a very simple decision: “Climate change and all which this philanthropic organisation does, they represent an existential condition for humanity.”

Merkel reiterated the importance of focusing on climate change acknowledging the controversies that often surround decisions made and the many policies on the table for the potential way ahead.

“Science is the most important link. Scientific evidence cannot be removed from the equation. We may have our own political views, but I believe we must make the right decision in order to ensure the survival of humanity,” Merkel observed.

Merkel further stressed that humanity now faces two crises, biodiversity loss and climate change, emphasising their interlinkages.

On biodiversity, Larigauderie spoke of the 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which alerted the world that a million species, out of an overall eight million, of plants and animals, now face extinction – many within decades.

This degradation of nature, she said, is affecting the capacity of ecosystems to deliver on a number of key functions central to human survival, including the capacity to mitigate against climate change and to achieve food security.

The jury, comprised of leading figures in global climate and environment research and action, highlighted how this prize recognises the role of science on the front line of tackling climate change and the loss of biodiversity.

Finding that “evidence-based science has been fundamental not only to advancing many of the political and public actions but also the need to attribute the ‘nature of urgency’ to the ways in which the political agenda approaches the question of combatting the climate crisis”.

In this regard, Larigauderie and Lee expressed their gratitude to thousands of scientists and indigenous and local knowledge holders for volunteering their time and expertise to deliver robust research on climate change and biodiversity.

“Our reports are the most authoritative, may I say, the scientific voice of the United Nations about climate change. They provide the world’s leaders and decision-makers at all levels with a sound and most scrutinised scientific knowledge about our climate system, climate change and how to tackle it,” Lee observed.

“The Prize comes at a critical time for climate change science. IPCC reports are clear and unequivocal. Climate change is man-made, widespread, rapid and intensifying. Today, we are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Against this backdrop, the Jury stressed that IPBES and IPCC stood out in highlighting the relationship between “science, climate, biodiversity and society, representing the best that is done in this field all around the world.”

The Jury, therefore, recognised how the two organisations serve to emphasise “the need to look at the climate crisis and biodiversity in conjunction, with concerted approaches making recourse to nature-based solutions.”

With an annual cash award of €1 million, the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity recognise people, groups of people or organisations from across the globe that make outstanding, innovative, and impactful contributions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

This is the third edition of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. It was awarded for the first time in 2020 to the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In 2021 the Prize was awarded to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, the largest global alliance for climate leadership in cities, comprising more than 10,600 cities and local governments from 140 countries, including Portugal.

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BRAC celebrates 50 years and has reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability. Credit: BRAC

By Naureen Hossain
New York, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

As part of the 2022 United Nations High-Level Political Forum, BRAC, with the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the United Nations, and the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations, hosted a side event this week to discuss development opportunities led by the Global South. The event highlighted the NGO’s achievements over the last five decades in alleviating and eradicating poverty and the interconnectedness between the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their initiatives.

The discussion was moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman. Speakers included BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh, Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh; Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations; Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island States (UN-OHRLLS) Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University.

At the high-level discussion commemorating BRAC’s 50 years of eradicating poverty were BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh; Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh and Robert Kayinamura, Deputy Permanent Representative of Rwanda Mission to the United Nations. Credit: BRAC

The event was a commemoration of BRAC’s 50th anniversary. Founded in 1972 by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, BRAC began as a humanitarian relief provider after Bangladesh’s war of independence ended in 1971. The NGO has since grown in scale and operations, the only one of its size to originate from the Global South. Its programs reach over 100 million people in 11 South Asia and African countries. It aims to provide the tools and strategies for people to graduate from poverty and into more financially stable, resilient lives. Over the last five decades, BRAC has worked to address the pressing socio-economic issues of the times through holistic, solutions-based approaches that have relied on local community involvement in multiple program planning and implementation avenues.

The success of BRAC and other NGOs has also come down to the close collaboration between them and the Bangladesh government. Bangladesh has been celebrated for its economic growth and development, achieving the highest GDP globally from 2010 to 2020. The World Bank has called it a “model for poverty reduction”. This has been possible, as Ambassador Rabab Fatima stated in her opening remarks, because of the government’s “tremendous commitment to achieving the UN SDGs, especially SDG 1: No Poverty – aligning national plans and policy documents with SDG targets and goals and working in close partnership with the NGO sector and other civil society members, including BRAC”.

The forum’s discussion also deliberated on the multi-faceted approach needed for poverty eradication.

BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh noted that “critical to eradicating poverty is understanding that it is multidimensional.”

“Solutions must address not only income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality – the many interconnected drivers that trap people in the most extreme states of poverty, unable to escape without receiving a significant transfer of assets and tailored support…”

Saleh also remarked that BRAC’s social development and investment approach had been shaped by a “problems-driven approach, rather than a proposal-driven one” and is crucially defined by its founding and establishment in the Global South. The traditional approach to development, as designed and dictated by the Global North, has had the unintended consequence of excluding millions of people from traditional programs and market-led initiatives.

“What we’ve seen is that people in extreme poverty are being left behind in development discussions.”

Deputy Chief and Senior Programme Management Officer to UN-OHRLLS Susanna Wolf; Oriana Bandiera, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Jaideep Prabhu, Director of the Center for India & Global Business, Cambridge University. Credit: BRAC

The high-level forum also covered how BRAC’s work and, in turn, Bangladesh’s growth and success demonstrate the SDGs’ interconnectedness, particularly regarding SDG1. Most notably, SDGs 4, 5, and 17 call for equitable and inclusive quality education for all, gender equality and revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development.

In working with millions of people living in extreme poverty, the solutions put forward by BRAC have been borne from innovation through frugality for the sake of financial viability and social and environmental impact, as Professor Jaideep Prabhu noted.

“Indeed, Bangladesh has pioneered the idea of social business… but instead of returning these profits to investors and owners, you put this wealth back into scaling your social mission and broadening your social impact.”

Prabhu also noted that this approach to business and social development had been adopted worldwide, including publicly listed companies that take responsibility for their performance’s social and environmental impact.

BRAC reached over nine million people living in extreme poverty through its Ultra-Poor Graduation program, which introduces a set of sequenced and holistic interventions intended to guarantee sustained financial stability.

Among their efforts at poverty eradication, a key factor has been to empower women through education and economic independence.

Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics remarked: “It is not possible to achieve SDG1 [No Poverty] without advancing economic opportunities for women and their status in society.”

Studies from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) have shown that investing in women’s economic empowerment can have a meaningful impact on social and economic development. This can be observed in Bangladesh, where it has made significant strides in reducing gender divisions, closing 72 percent of the overall gender gap, and reducing the rates of child marriages, maternal mortality, and family violence.

As was discussed in the forum, this investment in women’s economic empowerment and the long-term impact on poverty eradication can be achieved through community engagement. This has been seen in BRAC’s education programs, first pioneered in 1985. Their model for community-based education programs recruits women, men, and other members of local communities in the most vulnerable areas to provide accessible schooling for boys and girls in one-classroom settings. Today, BRAC has become one of the world’s largest education providers.

Poverty is multidimensional and solutions should not only address income and livelihoods but also education, health, climate, and gender equality, a high-level discussion moderated by IPS Senior Vice Chair and Executive Director, IPS North America, Farhana Haque Rahman heard. Credit: BRAC

BRAC demonstrated the potential for countries in the Global South to proactively lead development initiatives in the region. Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the UN Robert Kayinamura stated that middle-income countries should step up to corroborate and share their knowledge and lived experiences in shaping these initiatives, citing Rwanda’s growth in the development sector.

“We have tried to achieve within our means with the SDGs,” he said. “It has been partnerships, including BRAC, which has brought us to where we are.”

This sentiment and call for partnerships to achieve the SDGs was echoed by Susanna Wolf of UN-OHLLRS, who provided the perspective of international agencies.

“Strong emphasis on building resilience to various shocks from health emergencies to disasters and price shocks, which are all increasingly frequent and disproportionally affect LDCs (Least Developed Countries). To address the multidimensional nature of poverty, all partners are expected to step up their efforts. Social protection has an increasingly important role to play, and other LDCs can learn a lot from the innovative approaches spearheaded by BRAC.”

The systemic inequities that have resulted in and perpetuated extreme poverty have only come in sharper contrast in the wake of compounding global crises such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts of NGOs like BRAC and the frontline workers that continue to work through these crises to support the most vulnerable communities show their resilience. BRAC has championed people’s resilience, agency, and partnership for fifty years; may it continue for another fifty more.

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By External Source
Jul 12 2022 (IPS-Partners)

 
The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and a vital opportunity to address it, according to a four-year methodological assessment by 82 top scientists and experts from every region of the world.

Approved on Saturday, by representatives of the 139 member States of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature finds that there is a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions.

Economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritised certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with food produced intensively. Although often privileged in policymaking, these market values do not adequately reflect how changes in nature affect people’s quality of life. Furthermore, policymaking overlooks the many non-market values associated with nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation and cultural identity.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Prof. Unai Pascual (Spain/Switzerland), who co-chaired the Assessment with Prof. Patricia Balvanera (Mexico), Prof. Mike Christie (UK) and Dr. Brigitte Baptiste (Colombia). “Only 2% of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consult stakeholders on valuation findings and only 1% of the studies involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature. What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders, and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking.”

Deeply cross-disciplinary and, based on a large review conducted by experts in social science, economics and the humanities, the Values Assessment draws on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge. It also builds directly on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified the role of economic growth as a key driver of nature loss, with 1 million species of plants and animals now at risk of extinction.

To help policymakers better understand the very different ways in which people conceive and value nature, the Report provides a novel and comprehensive typology of nature’s values. The typology highlights how different worldviews and knowledge systems influence the ways people interact with and value nature.

In order to make this typology useful for decision-making, the authors present four general perspectives. These are: living from, with, in and as nature. Living from nature emphasizes nature’s capacity to provide resources for sustaining livelihoods, needs and wants of people, such as food and material goods. Living with nature has a focus on life ‘other than human’ such as the intrinsic right of fish in a river to thrive independently of human needs. Living in nature refers to the importance of nature as the setting for people’s sense of place and identity. Living as nature sees the natural world as a physical, mental and spiritual part of oneself.

The Report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10% per year over the last four decades. The most prominent focus of recent (2010-2020) valuation studies has been on improving the condition of nature (65% of valuation studies reviewed) and on improving people’s quality of life (31%), with just 4% focused on improving issues around social justice. 74% of valuation studies focused on instrumental values, with 20% focused on intrinsic values, and just 6% focused on relational values.

“The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with concrete tools and methods to better understand the values that individuals and communities hold about nature,” said Prof. Balvanera. “For example, it highlights five iterative steps to design valuation to fit the needs of different decision-making contexts. The report also provides guidelines on how to enhance the quality of valuation by taking into account relevance, robustness and resource requirements of different valuation methods.”

“Different types of values can be measured using different valuation methods and indicators. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can assessed, but it can also lead to loss of species, associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature. The report provides guidance for combining these very diverse values.”

“Valuation is an explicit and intentional process,” said Prof. Christie. “The type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why and by whom valuation is designed and applied. This influences whose and which values of nature would be recognized in decisions, and how fairly the benefits and burdens of these decisions would be distributed.”

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature”, said Dr. Baptiste. “Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status, can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The Report finds that there are a number of deeply held values that can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship and justice, both towards other people and towards nature. “Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Dr. Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognising the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The authors identify four values-centred ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable and just futures:

• Recognizing the diverse values of nature
• Embedding valuation into decision-making
• Reforming policies and regulations to internalize nature’s values
• Shifting underlying societal norms and goals to align with global sustainability and justice objectives

“Our analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to achieve just and sustainable futures. The report pays specific attention to future pathways related to ‘green economy’, ‘degrowth’, ‘Earth stewardship’, and ‘nature protection’. Although each pathway is underpinned by different values, they share principles aligned with sustainability,” added Prof. Pascual. “Pathways arising from diverse worldviews and knowledge systems, for instance those associated with living well and other philosophies of good living, can also lead towards sustainability.”

Among the other tools offered by the Report to strengthen the consideration of greater diversity of values of nature in decision-making are: an exploration of entry points for valuation across all parts of the policy cycle; six interrelated values-centred guidelines to promote sustainability pathways; an evaluation of the potential of different environmental policy instruments to support transformative change towards more sustainable and just futures by representing diverse values, and a detailed illustration of the required capacities of decision makers to foster the consideration and embedding of the diverse values of nature into decisions.

“Biodiversity is being lost and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now that at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values. The IPBES Values Assessment is being released at an extremely important time – just in advance of the expected agreement later this year by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The information, analysis and tools offered by the Values Assessment make an invaluable contribution to that process, to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to shifting all decisions towards better values-centred outcomes for people and the rest of nature.”

By the Numbers – Key Statistics and Facts from the Report

• 10%: increase in the average annual number of valuation studies undertaken over the last four decades

• 65%: valuation applications reviewed (2010-2020) in which the most prominent focus has been on improving the status of nature, followed by improving people’s quality of life (31%), and improving social justice (4%)

• 74%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which ‘instrumental values’ (e.g., nature as an economic asset) were elicited (as opposed to relational and intrinsic values)

• 50%: valuation applications among those reviewed in which value indicators of biophysical measures predominate, followed by monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• 72%: reported valuations performed at the sub-national rather than national or global scales (with very few studies dealing with cross-regional or cross-national protected areas, or with explicit reference to indigenous peoples and local communities’ territories)

• 25%: ecological contexts of reviewed valuations with emphasis given to the value of nature’s contributions to people that come from forests vs. cultivated areas (16%) and inland water bodies (11%)

• +/-48,000: studies out of 79,000 (61%) that provided explicit geo-referenced information

• 56%: reviewed valuations that did not attempt to bring different values together, but instead used distinct biophysical, monetary and socio-cultural indicators

• +/-50%: valuation studies reviewed that bring different values together apply methods allowing values to be directly compared; the other half compare bundles of values, or use relative weights based on participants’ or valuation experts’ rankings or deliberation

• <1%: valuation studies reviewed that keep values separate (i.e., treat them in parallel in a deliberative process) • 44%: valuation studies reviewed in which some stakeholder involvement was reported • 1%: valuation studies reviewed that included stakeholder consultation and their involvement in every step of the valuation process • 2%: valuation studies reviewed that reported consultations with stakeholders on findings • 0.6%: valuation studies reviewed that explicitly account for power issues in the valuation process • 5%: valuation studies reviewed that considered equity when aggregating impacts on individuals and social groups with diverse socio-economic conditions in valuation • 53%: of 460 future scenarios reviewed explicitly articulate values, 42% mention values but do not assess them explicitly and 53% perform some kind of valuation without reflecting on underpinning values

Excerpt:

The launch of the IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. The report argues that because nature is poorly valued, this is driving biodiversity loss. Credit: IISD Diego Noguera

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Jul 11 2022 (IPS)

Nature has diverse values for different people, but it is poorly evaluated, and this is driving the global biodiversity crisis, top scientists say in a new report.

The Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature found that the way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and, simultaneously, a vital opportunity to address this loss. Nature is valued for its contribution to food, medicines, energy, and cultural significance, among other benefits. Representatives of the 139-member states of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approved the report on Saturday, July 9, 2022.

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

Widening the values of nature

Conducted over four years, the Values Assessment by 82 top scientists and experts highlights a dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, and nature’s often multiple values are ignored in policy decisions. The Values Assessment sought to improve the value of nature, the quality of life, and justice.

“Biodiversity is being lost, and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now than at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES. “This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values.

The authors note that the release of the IPBES Values Assessment was strategic ahead of the expected agreement in December 2022 by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on a new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The Values Assessment is also expected to contribute to achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the future post-2020 global biodiversity framework, towards just and sustainable futures.

Cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Values Assessment. Credit: IPBES

“Effective policy decisions about nature must be informed by the wide range of values and valuation methods, which makes the IPBES Values Assessment a vital scientific resource for policy and action for nature and human well-being,” Salgar said.

The Values Assessment flagged unsustainable use of nature, including persistent inequalities between and within countries, as a key driver of the global decline of biodiversity. This resulted from predominant political and economic decisions based on a narrow set of values, such as prioritizing nature’s values as traded in markets and macroeconomic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The specific values of nature include nature as instrumental, intrinsic, and relational. The valuation was applied to habitats, mainly forests, cultivated areas, inland water bodies, and coastal areas.

Embedding values of nature into policymaking

The report notes that nature’s values and valuation approaches can be leveraged in policymaking, which presents opportunities to tackle the global biodiversity crisis.

The authors identified four values-centered ‘leverage points’ that can help create the conditions for the transformative change necessary for more sustainable development. These include recognizing the diverse values of nature, embedding valuation into decision-making, reforming policies and regulations to internalize nature’s values, and shifting underlying societal norms and goals to align with global sustainability and justice objectives.

Baptiste said values are behind our daily decisions and business opportunities and that assessment is helping locate the relations between those values and actions that the different actors in society can develop.

The report said that economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritized certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with intensive food production.

“With more than 50 valuation methods and approaches, there is no shortage of ways and tools to make visible the values of nature,” said Professor Unai Pascual, Assessment Co-chair. For instance, only two percent of the more than 1,000 studies reviewed consulted stakeholders on valuation findings, and only one percent involved stakeholders in every step of the process of valuing nature.

The Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature. Credit: IPBES

“What is in short supply is the use of valuation methods to tackle power asymmetries among stakeholders and to transparently embed the diverse values of nature into policymaking,” Pascual urged.

The Value Assessment, which drew on more than 13,000 references – including scientific papers and information sources from indigenous and local knowledge – builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment, which identified economic growth as a key driver of nature loss. More than 1 million plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

The report finds that the number of studies that value nature has increased on average by more than 10 percent per year over the last four decades, with the recent valuation studies focusing largely on improving the condition of nature and on improving people’s quality of life.

Co-chair Patricia Balvanera said the Values Assessment provides decision-makers with tools and methods to understand the values individuals and communities hold about nature.

The quality of valuation can be enhanced by considering the relevance, robustness, and resource requirements of different valuation methods. For example, a development project can yield economic benefits and jobs, for which instrumental values of nature can be assessed. However, the same project can also lead to the loss of species associated with intrinsic values of nature, and the destruction of heritage sites important for cultural identity, thus affecting relational values of nature.

Raising the quality of valuing nature

Another Co-chair of the Value Assessment, Mike Christi, said the valuation of nature is intentional. As a result, the type and quality of information that valuation studies can produce largely depends on how, why, and by whom valuation is designed and applied.

“Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values, and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities allows policies to be more inclusive, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature,” said Brigitte Baptiste, Co-chair.

“Also, recognizing the role of women in the stewardship of nature and overcoming power asymmetries frequently related to gender status can advance the inclusion of the diversity of values in decisions about nature.”

The report finds that a number of deeply held values can be aligned with sustainability, emphasizing principles like unity, responsibility, stewardship, and justice, both towards other people and towards nature.

“Shifting decision-making towards the multiple values of nature is a really important part of the system-wide transformative change needed to address the current global biodiversity crisis,” said Balvanera. “This entails redefining ‘development’ and ‘good quality of life’ and recognizing the multiple ways people relate to each other and to the natural world.”

The analysis shows that various pathways can contribute to just and sustainable futures through a green economy, degrowth, earth stewardship, and nature protection.

Commending the IPBES Assessment Report on the Values and Valuation of Nature, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Convention on Biological Diversity, Executive Secretary, noted that implementing the goals and targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will complement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, underpins the knowledge in different types of values of nature as demonstrated by the Values Assessment.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP), described the Values Assessment report as crucial because valuing nature was central to the successful post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework currently under negotiation.

“Nature, in all its diversity, is the greatest asset that humanity could ever ask for,” said Andersen. “Yet, its true value is often left out of decision making. Nature’s life support system has become an externality that doesn’t even make it onto the ledger sheet.”

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The IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species report was launched in Bonn, Germany. The report offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae worldwide. Credit: IISD Diego Noguera

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Jul 8 2022 (IPS)

Fifty thousand wild species meet the needs of billions of people worldwide, providing food, cosmetics, shelter, clothing, medicine and inspiration. But now, a million species of plants and animals face extinction with far-reaching consequences, including endangering economies, food security and livelihoods.

Against a backdrop of an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, a new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on July 8, 2022, offers insights, analysis and tools to establish more sustainable use of wild species of plants, animals, fungi and algae around the world.

The cover of IPBES Summary for Policymakers of Sustainable Use of Wild Species Assessment. Credit: IPBES

The IPBES Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species builds directly on the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which alerted the world that a million species of plants and animals face extinction, many within decades.

Approved this week by representatives of the 139 member States of IPBES in Bonn, Germany, the report is a result of four years of work by 85 leading experts from every region of the world to help decision-makers address the unsustainable use of wild species.

On the key findings, Professor John Donaldson from South Africa, who co-chaired the Assessment with Dr Jean-Marc Fromentin from France and Dr Marla R Emery (USA/Norway), said “at least 50,000 wild species are used through different practices, including more than 10,000 wild species harvested directly for human food. An estimated 70% of the world’s poor depend directly on wild species.

“One in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for their food and income; 2.4 billion rely on fuel wood for cooking; and about 90% of the 120 million people working in capture fisheries are supported by small-scale fishing.”

The report found that rural people in developing countries are most at risk from unsustainable use, with a lack of complementary alternatives often forcing them to further exploit wild species already at risk.

Overall, wild tree species account for two-thirds of global industrial roundwood. Trade in wild plants, algae and fungi is a billion-dollar industry. Even non-extractive uses of wild species are big business.

Pre-COVID, tourism based on observing wild species was one of the main reasons that protected areas globally received eight billion visitors and generated US$600 billion yearly.

Ana Maria Hernandez Salgar, IPBES Chair, said the report harnesses different knowledge systems to the dialogue on sustainable use of wild species.

“We cannot talk of the intrinsic relationship between people and nature if we do not incorporate sustainable use of wild species as one of the greatest challenges we face. We have to reduce the overexploitation of wild species and their unsustainability,” Salgar says.

In providing the evidence and science needed to ensure sustainability, Fromentin said the report identifies five broad categories of practices in using wild species: fishing, gathering, logging, terrestrial animal harvesting, including hunting and finally, non-extractive practices.

Alongside each practice, the authors then examined specific uses such as food and feed, materials, medicine, energy and recreation, providing a detailed analysis of each trend over the past 20 years.

The examination reveals that, by and large, the use of wild species has increased, but the sustainability of use varies. For instance, global estimates confirm that about 34 percent of marine wild fish stocks are overfished and that 66 percent are fished within biologically sustainable levels.

The survival of an estimated 12 percent of wild tree species is threatened by unsustainable logging. Several plant groups, notably cacti, cycads and orchids, are threatened by mostly unsustainable gathering. Unsustainable hunting is a threat to 1,341 wild mammal species.

Further, Emery said that sustainable use of wild species has and can have an even more significant contribution to the realisation of UN’s SDGs. She singled out 12 SDGs, including ending hunger, sustainable life on the planet, and sustainable life on earth, terrestrial areas and underwater.

Emery highlighted what is currently recognized as the potential role of wild species in meeting SDGs and how it pales in comparison to the substantial contribution that remains untapped.

“Among environmental drivers, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species in particular impact the abundance and distribution of wild species and this, in turn, impacts their sustainability, and in turn their ability to contribute to human well-being,” Emery says.

The report finds that global trade in wild species increases substantially without effective regulation across supply chains – from local to international. Global trade of wild species generally increases pressures on wild species, leading to unsustainable use and sometimes to wild population collapses – such as the shark fin trade.

Illegal trade in wild species represents the third-largest class of all illicit trade, with estimated annual values of up to US$199 billion. Timber and fish make up the largest volumes and value of illegal trade in wild species.

To address a global biodiversity crisis that is growing urgent with every passing day, Fromentin said the report fronts seven key elements with the potential to significantly promote sustainable use of wild species. These include policy options that are inclusive and participatory, that recognize and support multiple forms of knowledge and policy instruments and tools that ensure fair and equitable distribution of costs and benefits.

It further stressed the need for context-specific policies monitoring wild species and practices. These policy instruments should be aligned at international, national, regional, and local levels and maintain coherence and consistency with international obligations while considering customary rules and norms. Robust institutions, including customary institutions, should support them.

In conclusion, the report’s authors examine a range of possible future scenarios for the use of wild species. Confirming that climate change, increasing demand and technological advances, making many extractive practices more efficient, are likely to present significant challenges to sustainable use in the future.

To address identified challenges, the report proposes actions aligned to the five broad practices in the use of wild species. Take fishing, for instance, recommended actions include reducing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, suppressing harmful financial subsidies and supporting small-scale fisheries.

The timing of the report is crucial as world leaders move closer to agreeing on a new global biodiversity framework at the UN Biodiversity Conference in December 2022, fronted as the road to a bold new agreement for nature.

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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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Excerpt:

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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Aerial view of red copper mining waste. Credit: salajean/Shutterstock.com

By Patricia Balvanera, Brigitte Baptiste, Mike Christie and Unai Pascual
BONN, Germany, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

Nature has many values. A forest can be a cool and quiet place to retreat to when you need relaxation on a hot summer day. It is a habitat for many species. Trees also sequester and store carbon, reducing future impacts of climate change. But of course, the trees also have a monetary value if they are felled and turned into furniture or put to other uses. These are just four examples of the many values of nature, which are vital parts of our cultures, identities, economies and ways of life.

In 2019 the Global Assessment Report by IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) concluded that the health of ecosystems, on which we and all other species depend, is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before in human history. When we lose a forest, we also lose all of the many kinds of values people ascribe to it.

Nature is being threatened more than ever before because we don’t value it enough in our policies, choices and actions. One reason why this happens is that we only value what we can easily measure, such as the amount of wood we extract in a given moment from the forest. What is more difficult to value and therefore often ignored in our decisions is the millions of years of evolution that led to the diversity of wildlife in forests, the role that the forests play in regulating floods for people downstream, or the role of this forest in creating an identity of the people that live within it. These other values are critically important and yet they may be harder to be measured.

For this reason, in 2018 nearly 140 Governments tasked 82 leading experts with preparing a new IPBES Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. For four years these experts reviewed more than 13,000 references to understand the different ways in which people value nature, and the different ways in which these values can be measured and integrated into the decisions we make.

Policy decisions about nature should take into account the wide range of ways in which people value it, so that they can more effectively address the biodiversity crisis and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. To make this possible the new IPBES assessment drew not only on thousands of scientific articles and government reports, but also included very significant contributions from indigenous and local knowledge.

In the first week of July, the report will be considered by the member States of IPBES. Once accepted, it will inform decisions by Governments, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities, business, and more around the planet. To this end it will identify concrete opportunities and challenges for embedding values and valuation in decision-making, including a range of policy support tools. The report also identifies key capacity-building needs and knowledge gaps for future research.

It is easy to recognize the value of something once it has been lost. Let us not wait for that. It is time to understand and prioritize the many values of nature in decision-making.

Prof. Patricia Balvanera is a Professor at the Institute for Ecosystem and Sustainability Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Prof. Unai Pascual is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Basque Centre for Climate Change, Spain, and Associated Senior Research Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland.

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Salmon fishing. Credit: iStock

By Marla R. Emery, Jean-Marc Fromentin and John Donaldson
BONN, Germany, Jun 22 2022 (IPS)

You probably use wild species far more often than you realise. For many people, especially in more developed economies, the use of wild species sounds like something quite removed from their everyday lives – something perhaps more relevant to other people, in other countries.

It is a fact, however, that the use of wild species is a vital part of almost every human community. If you eat fish, they are most likely wild species. When you take cough medication, it’s likely to be derived, in part, from wild plants. Your wooden furniture may once have been a wild tree. Even the joy and inspiration you get from nature, such wildlife watching, is another use of wild species.

The 2019 Global Assessment Report by IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) alerted the world that direct exploitation is one of the main reasons that 1 million species of plants and animals now face extinction – many within decades. This should have been a wake-up call. Our human behavior is harming wild species, some of which we have relied on for centuries to provide nutrition, clothing, shelter, and more.

In other words, we use wild species to meet a wide range of human needs. By damaging them, we are also harming ourselves – and the policies and decisions we make about the use of wild species have consequences for our health, food security, livelihoods and general wellbeing.

This doesn’t mean that we have to stop eating fish entirely, give up on cough medication or find other materials for our homes – but what is needed, urgently, is better information and knowledge together with stronger institutions to ensure that our use of wild species is sustainable.

For this reason, four years ago, nearly 140 Governments tasked 85 leading experts, from every region of the word, with preparing a landmark new IPBES assessment report on the sustainable use of wild species – to help inform decisions about nature by governments, businesses, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities – in fact by everyone whose choices and actions impact nature.

In the first week of July, this report – drawing on more than 6,200 sources, will be considered by the member States of IPBES. Once accepted, it will become the go-to resource to inform policy options and actions to promote the more sustainable use of wild species from the global to the national and even the very local scale.

One of the things that sets this report apart is the extent to which it draws on the expertise and experiences not only of the natural and social sciences – but also of indigenous peoples and local communities. For many local communities, the use of wild species is inextricably entwined with their culture and identity – with customs and practices evolved over millennia to ensure sustainable use.

The report will also have very immediate real-world relevance. Having been specifically requested by, among others, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), it will directly inform the decisions of the 19th World Wildlife Conference in Panama in November 2022.

Additionally, it will be taken up by the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in the negotiations later this year of the new global biodiversity framework for the next decade. The sustainable use of wild species is also closely related to our ability to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to deal with other global challenges such as land use and climate change.

Among the most important aspects of this new IPBES report is just how vital the sustainable use of wild species is to everyone – everywhere, in the face of multiple global environmental crises. It will offer better information and options for solutions that work – for people and the rest of nature.

Dr. Marla R. Emery is a Scientific Advisor with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and retired Research Geographer with the US Department of Agriculture.

Prof. John Donaldson is an independent biodiversity consultant and previously Chief Director Biodiversity Research, Assessment and Monitoring at the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

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Nature Insight: Speed dating with the Future’, an IPBES podcast, is spreading the love for science and nature. Its aim is to change perceptions and ignite interest even in animals like the bat. Bats are often blamed for ills but in reality we, as humans, have expanded into bats' territory. Credit: Geoff Brooks/Unsplash

By Busani Bafana
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Feb 17 2022 (IPS)

In a busy world where love is a complicated affair, speed dating is one way to connect, but can it work to ignite more sustainable relationships with nature? Are we open to a romance with science and evidence?

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is spreading the love for science through an innovative podcast series, ‘Nature Insight: Speed dating with the Future’. A podcast is a regular series of digital audio episodes focused on a particular topic, which can be subscribed to, downloaded, or streamed.

Talking science

The IPBES podcast was first piloted in 2021 to help make the work of IPBES more accessible to a wider audience. IPBES is involved in documenting, synthesizing, and critically evaluating relevant knowledge about our relationship with the rest of nature to help reverse the global loss of biodiversity.

A second podcast season, launched just last week, will feature interviews with experts offering insights about biodiversity loss from many angles. This will include the sustainable use of wild species, the many values of nature, how the law can address the nature crisis, the role of the financial sector in biodiversity protection, and mobilizing private sector philanthropy for nature.

“We want to bring our work to new audiences and explain to decision-makers outside the environment space why they should care about the science of biodiversity and the science behind nature and the protection of nature,” explains Rob Spaull, Head of Communications at IPBES. He argues that biodiversity is often made to sound academic, something that belongs in a lab or a university, with little effect on people’s lives.

“That is furthest from the truth because biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people are all about what happens in our daily life; the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, and the diseases that we try to avoid. Biodiversity is the cornerstone of human wellbeing.”

Rob Spaull, Head of Communications at IPBES says the idea behind the podcast was to bring IPBES’ work to new audiences. Credit: IPBES

“Our first season of Nature Insight has been downloaded in dozens of countries and broke into the Top Ten charts for podcasts about nature and science. By the end of our first season, we had the evidence to show that not only had we produced a good podcast but that we had managed to expand our IPBES audience, particularly among non-environment decision-makers,” Spaull said. He noted that the podcast series also sought to give decision-makers the best evidence possible on biodiversity issues. For instance, in the first season, Dr Anne Poelina, an indigenous leader from Australia, discusses the value of different kinds of knowledge systems. She argues that indigenous knowledge should complement western science in science-policy reports.

Biodiversity under threat

IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body established to strengthen the science-policy interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human wellbeing, and suitable development. Its seminal publication, The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services, released in 2019, found that 1 million animals 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.

According to the Global Assessment Report, the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mostly since 1900. More than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef-forming corals, and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. The picture is less clear for insect species, but available evidence supports a tentative estimate of 10 percent being threatened.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said Robert Watson, former IPBES Chair, in 2019. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide.”

The IPBES podcast had been recorded remotely and launched during the first wave of COVID-19, which relates directly to nature loss. Spaull said the first episode of the first season had focused on the links between the risk of pandemics and the destruction of nature.

Speaking on the first episode of the show, zoologist and expert on disease ecology Dr Peter Daszak said people cannot blame the rest of nature – especially not pangolins, snakes, and bats, for our environmental health problems.

“I feel really sorry for bats in particular that they are getting blamed, already they have got such a bad rap in films, TV shows, and books. They are going about their daily business doing what they have done for millions of years,” said  Daszak, who is also President of EcoHealth Alliance. This non-profit organization supports global health. He explained that human populations have expanded to reach into the habitats of all animal species, like bats.

“We are eating them, cutting down the trees they live in, we invading the caves that they inhabit, and as by-products of that, we get exposed to the viruses they have carried for millions of years which do not harm them and unfortunately kill us. It’s really our fault actually if we want to point the blame.”

Admitting to having taken something of a gamble with the podcast’s title, Spaull said the podcast was essentially offering listeners a chance to speed date with nature and the future.

“As with real speed dating, you get this opportunity to connect, for a very short time, with people you might never otherwise have a chance to meet – and if what they say resonates with you, it could make a difference to both of your lives,” said Spaull. “We want to give people information about the science of biodiversity so that they can better understand our relationships with the species and ecosystems with whom we share our planet – so that we can all take better action and make better-informed choices.”

Mangroves substantially reduce the vulnerability of coastlines to erosion from waves and tides and are an important contributor to biodiversity. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Policymakers listening to the science?

Governments, decision-makers, and ordinary citizens need to protect biodiversity through transformative change. This was the underlying message in an episode entitled ‘Choose your own adventure (what is transformative change and how we all can make it happen)’ with Professor Kai Chan, an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented sustainability scientist at the Institution for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

Dr David Obura, one of the world’s leading experts on coral reefs and fisheries and the importance of coral reefs and coastlines for biodiversity and people, said the podcast has helped communicate science.

“I have enjoyed doing the podcast. It helps build up awareness about IPBES as an institution and what it does,” said Obura. He admitted that the Speed Dating podcast had introduced him to listening to podcasts.

“Policymakers are listening to the science to a greater extent in different countries and different sectors. I think the COVID pandemic has shown the importance of science and how we communicate it,” he said. “Amazing science is being done, but getting the message out about this science and evidence is critical.”

Acting for the future of biodiversity

With the second season of the Nature Insight: Speed Dating with the Future podcast now underway, Spaull said the series would continue to offer the views of seldom-heard voices and people with great stories to tell.

“Season two is timely; the global negotiations will take place later this year to agree on the biodiversity targets for the next ten years. These are going to be agreed by governments around the world, much as the climate change targets were recently discussed and agreed,” Spaull said.

“So it is a good time to be talking about all these issues and how they fit into people’s lives because it’s not just academic, it vital for us all.”

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A fisherman displays his catch of the day in Dominica. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 24 2021 (IPS)

On September 10^th, on a sweltering summer afternoon, three fishers drove a van around the residential community of Castle Comfort in Dominica, blowing forcefully into their conch shells – the traditional call that there is fresh fish for sale in the area.

One of the men, Andrew Joseph, urged a customer to double her purchase of Yellowfin Tuna, stating that at five Eastern Caribbean dollars a pound (US$1.85), she was getting the deal of the summer. (In the lean season, that price can double).

“It’s good fish, it’s fresh, it’s cheap,” he told IPS, adding that, “People eat too much meat. This is what is good for the body and the brain.”

Little did he know that he was echoing the words of a scientist who is rallying the world, and the landmark United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) to put greater emphasis on the financial, nutritional and traditional benefits of aquatic foods.

“Foods coming from marine sources, inland sources, food from water, they are superfood, but this is being ignored in the global debate and at the country level, because we have had a focus on land production systems and we have to change that,” Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, Global Lead for Nutrition and Public Health at World Fish told IPS.

The nutrition scientist is also the Vice-Chair of Action Track 4, Advancing Equitable Livelihoods, at the UNFSS.

As the landmark summit hopes to deliver urgent change in the way the world thinks about, produces and consumes food, issues like the linkages between aquatic systems and health are emerging.

So are other linkages a scoping report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) says the world cannot ignore. The report, approved in June, paves the way for a 3-year assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health.

In the case of the UNFSS, it shows how food systems transformation can be achieved if tackled as one part of this network.

“It will assess the state of knowledge, including indigenous and local knowledge, on past, present, and possible future trends in these interlinkages, with a focus on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people,” IPBES Executive Secretary Dr Anne Larigauderie told IPS.

“The IPBES nexus assessment will contribute to the development of a strengthened knowledge base for policymakers for the simultaneous implementation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Paris Agreement adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Landscape Ecology Professor Ralf Seppelt was one of the scoping experts for the nexus assessment. He says the science is clear on how food systems impact biodiversity and why agroecology must be a pillar of efforts to transform food systems.

“Micronutrients are lacking a lot. Micronutrients are provided by fruits and vegetables, which need pollination. So, the nexus is really strong between agroecological principles and the nutritional value of what we are producing,” he told IPS.

“Wherever we have to increase production, we should do it on agroecological principles. We should consider what farmers say and do, their needs, their access to production goods such as fertilizers and seeds, and it’s equally important to change our diets. It’s not just reducing harvest losses and food waste, but also about moving away from energy-rich, meat-based diets and feeding ourselves in an environmentally friendly way,” he said.

Professor Seppelt is also hoping that the voices of small farmers and indigenous communities are amplified in the global food transformation conversation. “IPBES made an enormous effort to work with indigenous peoples and local communities and include indigenous and local knowledge in its reports. We organized workshops, to collect a diversity of views about nature and its contributions to people, or ecosystem services to make the assessment as relevant as possible to a range of users,” he said.

For Thilsted, any plan to revamp food systems must come with a commitment to weed out inequality. She says from access to inputs and production to consumption and waste, inequality remains a problem.

“This unequal distribution of who wins, who loses, who does well, who does not do too well, who profits and who does not is putting a strain on food and nutrition and it is limiting our progress towards a sustainable development future,” she told IPS.

“COVID-19 has shown the fragility of the system and it is further displacing the vulnerable, for example, women and children who are being more exposed to food and nutrition insecurity.”

The IPBES nexus assessment hopes to better inform policymakers on these key issues.

It is not the first assessment of interlinkages. Earlier this year IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched a landmark workshop report that focused on tackling the climate and biodiversity crises as one.

Now, the current nexus assessment on interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health will explore options for sustainable approaches to water, climate change, adaptation and mitigation, food and health systems.

IPBES Executive Secretary Dr Anne Larigauderie says it also shows that there is hope for restoring the balance of nature.

“I would like people to remember and know that they are a part of nature, that the solutions for our common future are in nature; that nature can be conserved and restored to allow us, human beings, to simultaneously meet all our development goals. We can do this if we work together, act more based on equity, social and environmental justice, reflect on our values systems, and on our visions of what a good life actually is.”

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Restoring natural habitats as pictured here in Cuba will help to slow down climate change. A new UN-backed study released May 27 says annual investments in nature-based solutions will have to triple by 2030, and increase four-fold by 2050, if the world is to successfully tackle the triple threat of climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises. Credit: UNDP

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2021 (IPS)

The United Nations has been in the forefront of an ongoing battle against the growing hazards of climate change, including the destruction of different species of plants and animals, the danger of rising sea-levels threatening the very existence of small island developing states (SIDS), and the risks of oceans reaching record temperatures endangering aquatic resources.

But that battle was temporarily undermined last year by a devastating pandemic which brought the world to a virtual standstill.

“The COVID-19 pandemic put paid to many plans, including the UN’s ambitious plan to make 2020 the “super year” for buttressing the natural world”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last month.

That ambition, he pointed out, has now been shifted to 2021, and will involve a number of major climate-related international commitments, including a plan to halt the biodiversity crisis; an Oceans Conference to protect marine environments; a global sustainable transport conference; and the first Food Systems Summit, aimed at transforming global food production and consumption.

“The fallout of the assault on our planet is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security,” Guterres declared.

Professor Luca Montanarella

https://www.ipbes.net/assessment-reports/ldr

The devastating effects and the close interlinkages with human health, he argued, “are now fully understood and visible to all of us following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now time to act.”

He said the UN’s thematic plans to “Reimagine, Recreate and Restore” degraded ecosystems is the key solution, but it needs to be implemented consequently. There is a high risk to fall back to business-as- usual solutions that will be not solve the problem, he declared.

The young generation is the one that can save this planet, if properly empowered to do so. Are we ready to transfer some of the decision power to them?, he asked

The first signals from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are going in the opposite direction. The highest increases in unemployment rates are among women and young workers, he noted.

Mirna Inés Fernández, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) and co-founder of its Bolivian chapter, Kaaijayu-GYBN, told IPS the continued degradation of the global environment has been so devastating to the earth’s ecosystems “that our generation has seen the birth of concepts as the Anthropocene and the Planetary Boundaries”.

“Children and youth are the ones to face the biggest mental health impacts related to ecological grief and anxiety, because we realize that the loss of species and ecosystems have reached levels that threaten the biosphere integrity and our life support systems”.

“And we don’t see enough political will to reverse this situation,” she warned.

The world is ready and in desperate need for a real transformative change, “one that allows us to live in equitable and sustainable systems for all”.

What is missing, she said, is political will, adequate allocation of resources and an inclusive decision-making process that will lead to change the status quo that took us to this point.

“We need our world leaders to address the root causes of the multiple ecological crises that we face today: the UNSUSTAINABLE way we extract, produce, consume, and dispose of things, and the UNEQUAL way the benefits and damages of all these economic activities are distributed, as cited in the Youth Manifesto #ForNature”.

“As young people, we can play multiple roles in this global campaign: by spreading the word and getting more people to join and support this global youth movement, by demanding bold actions from our decision makers, or by leading the change by example, making use of the potential that young people have to bring innovative solutions to the table as transformative education and promotion of intergenerational equity”, she declared.

 

 
Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The UN points out its Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean while it can help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent a mass extinction. How feasible is this goal? What would prevent the UN from helping the world reach this goal?

Montanarella: Ecosystem restoration needs to go hand in hand with a large social inclusion programmes that will assure employment and sustainable livelihoods to the global population. Otherwise, it will be doomed to failure.

Fernandez: The goal of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is quite ambitious and will be very difficult to be reached in only one decade because effective and complete ecosystem restoration is a process that can take various decades.

But it is very important that we have this goal that will guide the efforts to avoid further ecosystem degradation and start restoration efforts of already degraded ecosystems.

I think that one of the most important risks that could prevent the UN helping the world reach this goal is the misuse of restoration related concepts, such as offsetting, net zero/no net loss approaches, and Nature-based solutions.

Without appropriately defined safeguards for biodiversity and human rights, the wrong implementation of ecosystem restoration strategies can promote further perverse monoculture, offsetting and greenwashing schemes.

Countries and companies who want to be considered implementers of the Decade should follow strong safeguards to ensure that the quality of the restoration efforts matches the quantity in the area within the restoration policies and projects

IPS: What are your thoughts on the findings of the Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment (https://www.ipbes.net/assessment-reports/ldr) by IPBES?

Montanarella: The Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment of IPBES, that I had the honour to co-chair jointly with my dear colleague and friend Prof. Robert Scholes who sadly passed away few days ago, clearly indicates the way forward and especially highlights the social and participatory dimension of land degradation.

Land is the basis of our existence on this planet and needs to be protected accordingly. Consumption habits and micro- as well as macroeconomic developments are the key drivers of land degradation and therefore need to be addressed if we want to reverse the current negative trend.

We can do a lot, starting from our individual lifestyles and dietary habits.

Fernandez: I consider that the IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration a key tool for policy makers and stakeholders to understand the extent and complexity of land degradation worldwide and take informed, appropriate action to address the drivers of land degradation and develop restoration strategies.

The key messages in the assessment, as well as the proposed ambitions and strategies for addressing land degradation, and possible actions and pathways, should be reflected in the outcomes of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and on the implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

They should also be taken into account in the development of national targets and commitments related to combating land degradation and restoring ecosystems. I come from Bolivia, a country that has lost more than 5 million ha of an endemic ecoregion “The Chiquitano Forest” due to forest fires in 2019.

After these fires, different actors have developed various approaches to restore the devastated ecosystems. Sadly, many of these initiatives lack a solid scientific basis and could do more harm than good, including introducing invasive species, making space for monoculture plantations or changing the structure of the forest.

This is why efforts like this assessment, that provides the best available science and expertise on land degradation and restoration, are crucial to be shared among the implementers of land restoration strategies and the ones combating land degradation at the national levels.

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The following article is part of a series to commemorate World Environment Day June 5

More than 60 percent of the world’s coral reefs are endangered due to overfishing, destructive practices and climate change, according to the United Nations. Yesterday the first-ever U.N. Summit on Biodiversity concluded with world leaders and experts agreeing on the urgency to preserve biodiversity globally. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2020 (IPS)

“Investing in nature is investing in a sustainable future,” was one of the key messages from yesterday’s first-ever United Nations Summit on Biodiversity where world leaders and experts agreed  on the urgency to act swiftly to preserve biodiversity globally. 

“More than 60 percent of the world’s coral reefs are endangered due to overfishing, destructive practices and climate change,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in his opening remarks  at the biodiversity summit, which was held as the 75th Session of the U.N. General Assembly wrapped up this week.

This loss doesn’t come without a cost.

Guterres added that according to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate, the amount of money required for sustainability of nature is about $300 – 400 billion, which is less than “current levels of harmful subsidies for agriculture, mining and other destructive industries”.

Guterres also pointed out how this disproportionately affects poor communities.

According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, between 50 to 90 percent of the livelihoods of poor households comes from ecosystems.

“Nature offers business opportunities to poor communities, from sustainable farming to eco-tourism or subsistence fishing,” Guterres said.

This year was especially crucial given the COVID-19 pandemic and the havoc it wreaked across communities around the world.

Volkan Bozkır, president of the General Assembly, pointed out the world’s  inability to ensure preservation of biodiversity severely impedes the ability to fight diseases — a result that is being witnessed first hand this year. It also negatively affects food security, water supplies, and livelihoods, among other issues.

“We must be pragmatic: our healthcare systems rely upon rich biodiversity,” Bozkır said. “Four billion people depend upon natural medicines for their health, and 70 percent of drugs used for cancer treatments are drawn from nature.”

“More than half of the world’s GDP – $44 trillion – is dependent on nature,” he added. 

Chinese president Xi Jinping addressed the meeting, extending a warm welcome for next year’s Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15) scheduled to take place in China. 

“COP15 offers an opportunity for parties to adopt new strategies for global biodiversity governance,” Xi said. 

Xi proposed a list of steps that leaders can take in order to ensure biodiversity preservation around the world:

• Adhere to ecological civilisation and increase the drive for building a beautiful world, given that a sound ecosystem is crucial for the prosperity of civilisation. “We need to respect nature, follow its laws, and protect it,” he said. “We need to find a way for man and nature to live in harmony, balance and coordinate economic development and ecological protection.”
  
• Uphold multilateralism and build synergy for global governance on the environment. “Faced with the risks and challenges worldwide, countries share a common stake as passengers [on] the same boat, and form a community with a shared future,” Xi said. “To enhance global governance on the environment, we must firmly safeguard the U.N.-centred international system, and uphold the sanctity and authority of international rules.”
  
• Continue with green development and increase potential for high quality economic recovery after COVID-19.
  

Meanwhile, panelists at a “Fireside Chat” panel brought up the importance of including indigenous communities in the conversation.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, said the indigenous community is “critical” to this conversation.

“Let’s recall they are the owners and managers of one quarter of global land area, and one third of protected areas,” Andersen said. “So safeguarding their right to their land is part of safeguarding biodiversity.”

Ana Maria Hernandez Salgar, the first woman chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also shared a similar sentiment as she reflected on what, in her experience, has led to true change.

“We have to work collectively: governments, individuals, private sector, academia, we need to address the root cause of biodiversity loss – it works,” Salgar said.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the appointed Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, also spoke on the same panel and added that it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that biodiversity, on top of being a concern, is also a solution to some of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

“We know, 14 out of the 17 SDGs depend on biodiversity, from nature-based solutions, to climate, to food, water, security, sustainable livelihood: biodiversity remains the basis for sustainable future and sustainable development,” Mrema said.

Perhaps the conversation on the link between biodiversity preservation and humans was most aptly put forth by Achim Steiner of the U.N. Development Programme who moderated the panel.

At the core of the preservation efforts is how we view the issue, Steiner said.

It’s not just about nature, it’s about humans too.

“Biodiversity has as much to do with nature as it has to do with people, people’s dependence on nature, people’s inability to see the complexities of nature, people’s blindness and sometimes greed and ignorance and also the planetary blindspots of our economies.”

Coral Reefs restoration at the coast of Banaire in the Caribbean. Credit: UN Environment Programme

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2020 (IPS)

The coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over one million people worldwide and destabilized the global economy, also upended the UN’s ambitious socio-economic goals, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

While extreme poverty rates have fallen in past years, says Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, “it is projected that between 70 and 100 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic”.

And by the end of 2020, she warned, an additional 265 million people could face acute food shortages.

According to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, ocean levels are rising quicker than expected, “putting some of our biggest and most economically important cities at risk”. More than two-thirds of the world’s megacities are located by the sea. And while the oceans are rising, they are also being poisoned,” Guterres warned.

And as the planet burns, one million species in the world’s eco-system are in near-term danger of extinction.

Meanwhile, the international community has failed to live up to its commitments – and meet all of its targets — on biodiversity

Just ahead of the first-ever UN Biodiversity Summit on September 30, Volkan Bozkir, President of the General Assembly lamented the fact that none of the 20 biodiversity targets agreed by Member States in Aichi, Japan a decade ago, “have been fully achieved”.

“Words and good intentions are clearly not enough. They will not clean the oceans, save elephants, or prevent deforestation. Only our actions can do that,” he declared.

The recently-released United Nations’ Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 reveals that biodiversity is declining at record rates, and only six of the 20 goals laid out by 2010’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets have been “partially achieved.”

The study shows some areas of progress, but it found “the natural world is suffering badly and getting worse.” And if the world continues on its current trajectory, biodiversity– and the services it provides– will continue to decline, jeopardizing the achievement of the UN’s highly-touted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it warned.

Asked for the reasons for this shortfall, Dr. Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) told IPS the Global Outlook confirms and builds on the findings of the IPBES Global Assessment Report – including the new report-card on the progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity targets.

“One of the reasons for this shortfall is that we, collectively, including Governments, but also the private sector, have failed to seriously address the direct causes of biodiversity loss, including land use change (deforestation, urban sprawl etc.), overexploitation of resources (terrestrial and marine), and climate change, as well as the underlying causes, which relate to our economy, institutions, governance, and which are all deeply anchored in our values and behaviors.”

“We need to better understand and address the causes of these losses and act upon them. Another main reason is that considerations about biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people have still not been brought to the centre of decision-making,” she noted.

Dr. Larigauderie pointed out that the “health of our natural environment very directly influences almost every aspect of development – from food and water security, to livelihoods, health and even peace and security”.

To achieve SDGs requires nature to be a key consideration in decisions, policies, investments and actions across all parts of the economy and society.

“This is how we can achieve the transformative change needed to address our increasingly frayed relationship with the rest of nature”, she declared.

Meanwhile, a study released mid-September noted that, since 1993, and the Convention on Biodiversity, up to four dozen animal species have been saved.

This was done, said the President of the General Assembly, with local, national and international action and included habitat protection, species reintroduction, and legal protections, amongst other efforts.

“This demonstrates that we can deliver”, he declared.

The goal is to build political momentum for the Convention on Biodiversity’s Conference of the Parties (COP15), in Kunming, China in 2021, where world leaders will agree to an ambitious plan of action on biodiversity.

“Kunming needs to turn biodiversity into a household concern and political issue. Everyone must realize the risks of inaction,” said Bozkir.

Asked how devastating has been the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the state of biodiversity worldwide, Dr. Larigauderie said direct impacts of the pandemic on global biodiversity are not yet well-researched – “but we are all aware of anecdotal evidence, both positive and negative, such as reports about the resurgence of nature in some areas and improved air quality, as well as increased waste related to disposal of personal protective equipment and the unfortunate and unjustified targeting of some species of wild animals”.

“But the way you phrase the question is also indicative of a challenge – the impact of COVID-19 on people and economies cannot be separated from a proper analysis of its impact on biodiversity, because the two are totally interlinked”.

She argued that lockdown has essentially halted eco-tourism in many areas, not only damaging livelihoods but also massively reducing resources available to conservation.

Stimulus packages to drive economic recovery contain within them either nature-positive measures or more regressive ones that could in fact raise the risk of future pandemics by accelerating nature loss, she declared.

IPS: What are your expectations of the UN’s first-ever Summit on Biodiversity which is aimed at providing political direction and momentum for the development of a post-2020 global biodiversity framework?

Dr.Larigauderie: To achieve the SDGs requires the implementation of an ambitious and well-resourced post-2020 biodiversity framework. The UN Nature Summit is the best opportunity for decision-makers in Government, the private sector and civil society to already raise the levels of ambition for the negotiations next year and to recommit to policies, decisions and actions informed by the best-available science and expertise.

IPS: How adequate is the proposed funding for actions related to biodiversity– estimated at between $78 – $91 billion per year– compared with the estimated $500 billion spent on fossil fuels and other subsidies that cause environmental degradation?

Dr. Larigauderie: The IPBES mandate is to provide evidence and policy options for better-informed decisions – we do not prescribe or make normative judgements. That said, the IPBES Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration found, for instance, that on average, the benefits of restoration are 10 times higher than the costs, and, for some regions the cost of inaction in the face of land degradation is at least three times higher than the cost of action.

The IPBES Global Assessment Report also identified the removal of harmful incentives and the promotion of nature-positive ones as some of the specific possible actions that would drive transformative change for people and nature. Harmful subsidies include, for instance, Government grants for pesticides, to unsustainable fishing, and to fossil fuels, which all drive the loss of biodiversity.

IPS: Any indications of the new set of targets currently under negotiation, for 2021-2030, and to go before the 15th Conference of Parties of the Convention of Biological Diversity, scheduled to be held in Kunming, China, in May 2021?

Dr. Larigauderie: These are exactly the discussions that have started and will continue under the Open-Ended Working Group on the post-2020 biodiversity framework and which have already resulted in a publicly available zero-draft of the framework to be negotiated, and subsequent comments thereon.

This week, Heads of State and Government from 64 countries announced one of the strongest pledges yet to reverse the loss of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people by 2030. Advancing from powerful pledges to concrete policy and action, however, means that nature must be moved to the heart of global, national and local decision-making. It’s time for nature to be reintegrated into everything we do.

Ana María Hernández Salgar

As a firm re-commitment to urgent action ahead of the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, taking place today in New York and virtually around the world, it can be a vital and positive turning point towards the transformative change needed for people and nature – but this will require a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.

Biodiversity is the foundation of human life and well-being. When we destroy the natural world, we endanger our own lives and livelihoods. Effective action on nature must, therefore, be based on the best-available science and expertise – to properly understand our challenges and the options available for a better future.

The undertaking in the Leaders’ Pledge – that the design and implementation of policy will be science-based – is therefore extremely welcome. The science, evidence and expertise already exist in the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and other key IPBES reports.

It is evident, from the science, that we are living in an unsustainable downward spiral of land- and sea-use change, over-exploitation, pollution, climate change and invasive species – and that we are the cause. This drives the devastation of nature and directly impacts our own quality of life through food, health, the economy and even peace and security.

Placing nature at the center of decisions in key sectors – including agriculture, fisheries and forestry, energy, tourism, health, infrastructure, extractive industries, and trade – will help to end this vicious cycle. Nature makes invaluable material and non-material contributions to our lives across every sector of human development and activity. The whole of Government approach described in the Pledge is, therefore, grounded in solid science, and is absolutely necessary.

Sustainable use, wise management and effective conservation of natural resources – strengthened by the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples and local communities, are key components of a more effective and integrated approach.

The fact that the first-ever UN Summit on Biodiversity is taking place amidst the COVID-19 pandemic – is framing the urgency of our frayed relationship with nature in terms that make biodiversity loss extremely personal and undeniably significant. Humanity now stands at a crossroads for meaningful change. If we fail to take this opportunity to voluntarily change course, we risk entering uncharted waters where pandemics, for instance, are more likely and more devastating.

As the UN Secretary-General said during the UNGA75 High-Level Week, “solidarity is self-interest.” Our shared challenge – as leaders and citizens – is to rally around nature as our common ground and our common home – to recognize that nature itself contains most of the solutions to address our shared threats of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Perhaps the most encouraging element of the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature is the explicit commitment to meaningful action and mutual accountability, beyond words on paper. If we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to build a sustainable future, we must leave behind the outdated ‘business-as-usual’ models, informed by the current, limited paradigm of economic grow at all costs.

We begin by rediscovering that nature is inextricably linked to every decision we make – in economic, social, political and technological spaces – and seizing this unprecedented opportunity to shift our world towards a more sustainable future, with nature at the heart of our approach.

As hundreds of the world’s leading scientists found, and intergovernmental representatives from more than 130 Member States agreed last May: “By its very nature, transformative change can expect opposition from those with interests vested in the status quo, but such opposition can be overcome for the broader public good.”

The author is Chair of IPBES

About IPBES:

IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body comprising 137 member Governments. Established by Governments in 2012, it provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people, as well as the tools and methods to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets. To some extent IPBES does for biodiversity what the IPCC does for climate change. For more information about IPBES and its assessments visit www.ipbes.net

By External Source
Sep 23 2020 (IPS-Partners)

On the eve of the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, Dr. Anne Larigauderie calls on everyone to make ambitious commitments to protect #biodiversity and #nature.

By External Source
Aug 13 2020 (IPS-Partners)

Coral reefs are iconic, but we have all seen the images of bleached areas that were previously teeming with life and colour. These ecosystems, and more broadly coastlines, are a vital part of the efforts to protect biodiversity. So how are coral reefs doing? Are we too late? Can we still secure a better future for reefs and people? In this week’s episode, Brit talks to Dr. David Obura. David has studied coral reef resilience and adaptation his whole life. He founded CORDIO, a non-profit organisation specialising in finding solutions that benefit marine ecosystems and people. To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

By External Source
Jul 30 2020 (IPS-Partners)

In the IPBES Global Assessment report, we learnt that to safeguard all life on Earth, we need transformative change. So what does that mean? How can we make it happen? This week’s guest is Kai Chan. He is a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the Coordinating Lead Authors of the Global Assessment. To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

Episode 3

By External Source
Jul 17 2020 (IPS-Partners)

How do we incorporate different knowledge systems in the battle for biodiversity? Billy Offland set off on a 2-year journey to learn about conservation from as many different people as possible. In his travels, he met Dr. Anne Poelina in the Kimberley in Western Australia. Anne is a Nyikina Warrwa Traditional Owner and chair of the Mardoowarra Fitzroy River Council.What can we learn from the Fitzroy River Council? How do we create “forever industries”? How can we use this knowledge in global policymaking?Music: River Feeling by Kalaji (Mark Coles Smith)To find out more about IPBES, head to www.ipbes.net or follow us on social media @IPBES.

By External Source
Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

My name is Emma, I’m 10 years old, and I live in Canada. I am sharing this video with you, today, because I learned at school that my future – the future of all children – will be determined by what we do together today.

The life we lead – from the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the climate that makes our planet a livable place – comes from nature. If we do not do our part to help it, everything we have in our lives will be lost.

We are at a point of “no return.”

World Environment Day is the most important day for environmental action. It has been celebrated every year on June 5th: working with governments, businesses, celebrities, and citizens to focus their efforts on a key environmental issue.

This year, the theme for the day is “Biodiversity.” It is the foundation that supports all life on land and below water. It affects every aspect of human health, providing clean air and water, nutritious foods, science and medicine, resistance to disease and helps with climate change. Changing, or removing, just one part of this delicately balanced system affects the entire life system – and the results are devastating.

According to IPBES, as many as one million species of living things are at risk of extinction. 75% of our land-based environments and two thirds of our marine environments have been changed by human actions. Urban areas have more than doubled since 1992. Plastic pollution has increased ten times since 1980, all long before I was born.

And now, COVID19 shows just how the destruction of biodiversity can harm the system that supports human life. The United Nations says that almost one billion cases of illness and millions of deaths happen every year from diseases caused by coronaviruses. About three quarters of all emerging infectious diseases in humans are passed on to people from animals. And what most people do not understand is that sustaining biodiversity on our planet protects us against pandemics.

IUCN has made it clear that governments have not done enough to stop the loss of biodiversity on our planet.
Much remains to be done.

Nature is sending us a message. So please listen for the sake of our future!

Credit: Remi Yuan / Unsplash

By Ana María Hernández Salgar
BONN, May 22 2020 (IPS)

Restoring damaged ecosystems is vital to avoid the collapse of nature’s most valuable contributions to people, but International Day for Biological Diversity 2020 should also be a wake-up call about the importance of addressing our social, economic and systemic values, because it is these that are driving the destruction of nature.

We are part of nature, but our choices and behaviours have pushed the rest of the natural world to the brink of disaster. Hunger, disease, loss of livelihoods and rising levels of risk and insecurity are the direct result of our own actions. To shift to a more sustainable future, the best-available expert evidence tells us that we need transformative change to reset our fundamental relationship with our environment.

This will require us to tackle the nature and climate emergencies directly and simultaneously, uniting behind both climate and biodiversity science. We have already hit ‘snooze’ for too many decades on the warnings of experts from every discipline and every region – further delays are entirely at our own peril.

Transformative change means a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors. It means addressing not just the direct and most visible threats to biodiversity – such as land-use change, overfishing, pollution, climate change and invasive alien species – but also tackling the values and behaviours that find expression through indirect drivers such as population trends, production and consumption patterns, weak governance and conflicts.

The way we lead our lives and do business has effectively been freeloading on the bounty that nature contributes to people, taking for granted the natural processes that revitalize our environment. Instead of living within our means, we’ve been using up more and more ‘natural capital’ – well beyond what nature can replenish – and it’s a debt that is now past due. This is one of the reasons that the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Risks Report recognized that the top five risks to business around the world are all environmental.

Ana María Hernández Salgar

The good news, however, is that many sustainable solutions to these problems can also be found in nature – and are, therefore, still within reach. The efforts that many countries, organizations, communities and institutions have already put into recovering biodiversity are beginning to bear fruit.

It is important for us to learn from these good examples, and from our mistakes, to chart a realistic and rigorous path, with concrete actions, but based on our different national and regional circumstances.

Investing in nature holds great promise. Nature-based solutions to climate change, for instance, such as restoring degraded lands, can provide more than a third of the mitigation needed by 2030 to keep climate warming well below 2°C.

Implementing both existing and new policy instruments through interventions that are integrative, informed, inclusive and adaptive will enable the global transformation that we need.

Coordinated action at local, national, regional, and international levels is needed to safeguard remaining habitats, undertake large-scale restoration of degraded habitats, and more broadly to place nature at the heart of decision-making and sustainable development.

Importantly, this will also entail a change in our understanding of what constitutes a good quality of life – decoupling the idea of a good and meaningful life from ever-increasing material consumption and forging individual, collective and organizational actions towards sustainability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unavoidable delay in the planned global negotiations on the post-2020 framework for biodiversity, but 2020 is still a “Super Year for Nature”. The world has had the chance this year to see very directly the importance of changing values, approaches and behaviours, and to better understand the vital connection between people and nature.

After this crisis we will confront a ‘new normal’ – hopefully this will also be a watershed moment with values, approaches and behaviours – the indirect drivers of change in nature – at the forefront of policy and action.

The available evidence makes it clear that going back to ‘business as usual’ – ignoring our collective impacts on nature – would be a grave mistake.

The burning question on this day to commemorate the importance of nature is if and when we will change and seriously face the emergencies unfolding around us.

Enquiries: media@ipbes.net

Ana Maria Hernandez is the Chair of IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which, much like the IPCC does for climate change, provides objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the contributions they make to people, as well as options and actions to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets.