In order to find common responses to tackle threats to biodiversity and climate simultaneously, 50 of the world’s leading biodiversity and climate experts from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) collaborated to publish a joint report, which was released last month.
This report highlights the interconnection between the climate crisis and the threats to biodiversity and confirms that both must be addressed together if we want to have a concrete impact and reverse them. The report also confirms that restoring and protecting nature will boost biodiversity and the ecosystems that rapidly absorb carbon emissions. Some of the key measures recommended in the report to effectively tackle biodiversity loss and climate change together included:
- Stopping the loss and degradation of carbon- and species-rich ecosystems on land and in the ocean, especially forests, wetlands, peatlands, grasslands, and savannahs; coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, kelp forests, and seagrass meadows; as well as deep water and polar blue carbon habitats.
- Restoring carbon- and species-rich ecosystems.
- Expanding protected areas.
- Increasing sustainable agricultural and forestry practices to improve the capacity to adapt to climate change, enhance biodiversity, increase carbon storage, and reduce emissions.
Born Free USA’s Global Nature Recovery Investment Initiative (GNRII), launched last year, is in line with the exports’ conclusions. The GNRII sets out measures aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity loss and wildlife overexploitation, expanding and strengthening protected areas’ integrity, delivering enhanced and sustainable ecosystem viability and services alongside climate change mitigation, and at promoting public and animal health, sustainable livelihoods, and food and societal security.
In addition, Born Free USA emphasizes the urgent need for bold global financial reform to ensure governments, businesses, and society as a whole look beyond GDP as a narrow measure of success and ”biodiversity-proof” budgets in order to maximize our wealth, health, and well-being, and that of future generations.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that $500 billion per year of public finance is spent in support for activities that are potentially harmful to biodiversity. Negative subsidies must be reinvested in activities that benefit nature conservation. Debt forgiveness and debt for nature schemes must be used to support developing countries in efforts they lead for nature recovery. Resource mobilization mechanisms must prioritize investment in ecological resilience to ensure ecosystem services are protected through the strengthening of biodiversity protection measures, including the securing and protection of at least 30% of the planet (marine and terrestrial) by 2030.
Our planet is in crisis. We can halt and reverse the decline in the natural world and we can secure a viable future for ourselves and all life on earth, but we need our leaders to act now, and act boldly.
Let’s all ensure our global pocketbooks match the ambition of the solutions experts confirmed as urgently needed!
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Aurora
