Tag Archives: Nature Action

5 key drivers of the nature crisis

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Pollution, including from chemicals and waste, is a major driver of biodiversity and ecosystem change with especially devastating direct effects on freshwater and marine habitats. Plant and insect populations are dwindling as a result of the persistent usage of highly dangerous, non-selective insecticides.

Marine plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980, affecting at least 267 animal species, including 86 per cent of marine turtles, 44 per cent of seabirds and 43 per cent of marine mammals. Air and soil pollution are also on the rise.

Globally, nitrogen deposition in the atmosphere is one of the most serious threats to the integrity of global biodiversity. When nitrogen is deposited on terrestrial ecosystems, a cascade of effects can occur, often resulting in overall biodiversity declines.

Reducing air and water pollution and safely managing chemicals and waste is crucial to addressing the nature crisis.

Direct exploitation of natural resources

Unsustainable logging greatly contributes to deforestation
Persistent usage of dangerous chemicals posing threat to plants and insects. Photo by Pixabay/ Reijo Telaranta

The recent IPBES report on the sustainable use of wild species reveals that the unsustainable use of plants and animals is not just threatening the survival of one million species around the world but the livelihoods of billions of people who rely on wild species for food, fuel and income.

According to scientists, halting and reversing the degradation of lands and oceans can prevent the loss of one million endangered species. In addition, restoring only 15 per cent of ecosystems in priority areas will improve habitats, thus cutting extinctions by 60 per cent by improving habitats.

Negotiations at COP15 are expected to focus on protecting plants, animals and microbes whose genetic material is the foundation for life-saving medicines and other products. This issue is known as access and benefits sharing governed by an international accord – the Nagoya Protocol.

Delegates at COP15 will be looking at how marginalized communities, including Indigenous Peoples, can benefit from a subsistence economy – a system based on provisioning and regulating services of ecosystems for basic needs. Through their spiritual connection to the land, Indigenous Peoples play a vital protection role as guardians of biodiversity.

Invasive species

Unsustainable logging greatly contributes to deforestation
Invasive species pose a threat to native species and negatively impact the ecosystems. Photo by UNEP/ Stephanie Foote

Invasive alien species (IAS) are animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms that have entered and established themselves in the environment outside their natural habitat. IAS have devastating impacts on native plant and animal life, causing the decline or even extinction of native species and negatively affecting ecosystems.

The global economy, with increased transport of goods and travel, has facilitated the introduction of alien species over long distances and beyond natural boundaries. The negative effects of these species on biodiversity can be intensified by climate change, habitat destruction and pollution.

IAS have contributed to nearly 40 per cent of all animal extinctions since the 17th century, where the cause is known. Meanwhile, environmental losses from introduced pests in Australia, Brazil, India, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States are estimated to reach over US$100 billion per year.

IAS is a global issue that requires international cooperation and action. Preventing the international movement of these species and rapid detection at borders is less costly than control and eradication.

How can you follow COP15?

 

About COP15
From December 7-19 in Montreal, Canada, 196 governments will meet to strike a landmark agreement to guide global actions on biodiversity. The framework will need to lay out an ambitious plan that addresses the key drivers of nature loss and puts us on the path to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.



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Renowned economist strives to calculate the value of nature

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“Economic forecasts consist of investment in factories, employment rates, [gross domestic product] growth. They never mention what’s happening to the ecosystems,” said Dasgupta, who is this year’s United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation. “It really is urgent that we think about it now,” he said.

The report was the culmination of four decades of work in which Dasgupta has sought to push the boundaries of traditional economics and lay bare the connection between the health of the planet and the stability of economies.

The Economics of Biodiversity is the foundation of a growing field of what is known as natural capital accounting, in which researchers attempt to assess the value of nature. Those numbers can help governments better understand the long-term economic costs of logging, mining and other potentially destructive industries, ultimately bolstering the case for protecting the natural world.

“Sir Partha Dasgupta’s ground-breaking contributions to economics over the decades have awakened the world to the value of nature and the need to protect ecosystems which enrich our economies, our well-being and our lives,” said Inger Andersen, UNEP Executive Director.

Economics as part of a ‘tapestry’

Dasgupta was born in 1942 in what is now the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. (At the time, the city was part of India.) His father, the noted economist Amiya Kumar Dasgupta, had a huge influence on him and his path towards academia. After completing a bachelor’s degree in physics in Delhi, Dasgupta moved to the United Kingdom where he studied mathematics and later gained a doctorate in economics.

Through his many major contributions to economics for which he was knighted in 2002, Dasgupta has helped to shape the global debate on sustainable development and use of natural resources.

“Nature is a wondrous factory, producing a bewildering variety of goods and services at different speeds and of varying spatial coverage. Think of, for example, all the beautiful processes that shape wetlands – the birds and insects that pollinate, the water voles that dig round for food, the way tiny organisms decompose material and filter water,” said Dasgupta.

“It is a bewildering tapestry of things that are happening, many of which are unobservable. And yet they are creating the atmosphere in which humans and all living organisms can survive. The way we measure economic success or failure, the whole grammar of economics, needs to be built with this tapestry in mind.”

Affection for nature

Dasgupta traces his interest in the idea of living sustainably in a world of limited natural resources to his now classic 1969 paper On the Concept of Optimum Population. In the 1970s, Swedish economist Karl-Göran Mäler encouraged him to develop his ideas on the links between rural poverty and the state of the environment and natural resources in the world’s poorest countries, a subject that was notably absent from mainstream development economics at the time.

This led to further explorations of the relationships between population, natural resources, poverty and the environment, for which Dasgupta has become acclaimed.

“I’ve had a ball working in this field,” he said. “One reason it’s been fun is that I had no competition. Nobody else was working on it.”

A man standing in a library
For four decades, Dasgupta has sought to push the boundaries of traditional economics and lay bare the connection between the health of the planet and the stability of economies. Photo: UNEP/Diego Rotmistrovksy 

Grasslands, forests and freshwater lakes are some of Dasgupta’s favourite ecosystems. He believes children should be taught nature studies from an early age and that the subject should be as compulsory as reading, writing and arithmetic. “That’s one way to generate some affection for nature. If you have affection for nature, then she is less likely to be trashed,” he said.

Inclusive wealth

Dasgupta is passionate about the need to replace gross domestic product as a measure of the economic health of countries because it tells just part of the story. He argues instead for “inclusive wealth”, which not only captures financial and produced capital but also the skills in the workforce (human capital), the cohesion in society (social capital) and the value of the environment (natural capital).

This idea is embedded in the United Nations-supported System of Environmental Economic Accounting which allows countries to track environmental assets, their use in the economy, and return flows of waste and emissions.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed the Inclusive Wealth Index. Now calculated for about 163 countries, the index indicates that inclusive wealth expanded by an average of 1.8 per cent from 1992-2019, far below the rate of GDP, largely because of declines in natural capital.

Nature as a capital asset

Echoing the urgency of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation, Dasgupta’s Economics of Biodiversity warns that critical ecosystems, from coral reefs to rainforests, are nearing dangerous tipping points, with catastrophic consequences for economies and people’s well-being.

The 600-page report calls for a fundamental rethink of humanity’s relationship with nature and how it is valued, arguing that the failure to include “ecosystem services” on national balance sheets has only served to intensify exploitation of the natural world.

“[It is] about introducing nature as a capital asset into economic thinking and showing how economic possibilities are entirely dependent on this finite entity,” said Dasgupta.

 

About the UNEP Champions of the Earth

The UN Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth honours individuals, groups, and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment. The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector

About the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

The UN General Assembly has declared the years 2021 through 2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Led by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN together with the support of partners, it is designed to prevent, halt, and reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It aims at reviving billions of hectares, covering terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. A global call to action, the UN Decade draws together political support, scientific research, and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration.

 



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