The variety of life on Earth has been falling for 50 years in all corners of the planet. And this loss of animal and plant species affects multiple facets of life and the economy: food production, people’s health, water quality… According to a new report from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Services Ecosistemicos (Ipbes), an organization linked to the UN, more than half of the world’s gross domestic product It depends significantly on nature. That is, 58 billion dollars annually. Despite this, current policies deepen the decline of biodiversity.
A total of 165 international experts from 57 countries sign the Report on the Assessment of the Interrelationships between Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health. They conclude that in the last 50 years, the decline in all biodiversity indicators has been between 2 and 6 percent per decade.
«Biodiversity is essential for our own existenceas it sustains our food and water supply, our health and climate stability,” the report says. This loss is having direct effects because »it affects the functioning of ecosystems, the availability and quality of water, food security and nutrition, human, plant and animal health and resilience to the impacts of climate change«.
In fact, the report highlights that more than half of the world’s gross domestic product depends moderately or highly on nature. «But in current decision making sand prioritize short-term economic benefits while the costs to nature are ignored, and the agents of negative economic pressures on the natural world are not held accountable,” says Pamela McElwee, co-chair of the evaluation. That’s why they already exist ‘hidden costs’ in the economy, which the Ipbes calculates at a minimum from 10 to 25 billion dollars per year.
Lines of action
The report warns that if current trends continue, the results will be extremely bad for biodiversity, water quality and some dimensions of health, with worsening climate change and greater difficulties in achieving global policy goals.
They conclude that governments have failed to tackle the biodiversity crisis in part because Policies are conceived on a sectoral basis and what is good for agriculture, for example, is bad for water quality; or what is good for energy policy is bad for biodiversity. It is necessary to take into account all the links in the environment or there is a risk of aggravating crises. «This generates governance gaps, conflicting objectives and incentives and leads to unintended consequences and inefficient use of resources,” the report says.
For this reason, the platform proposes more than 70 lines of action that can reverse the decline in biodiversity. They propose, for example, the restoration of carbon-rich ecosystems such as forests, soils, mangroves; biodiversity management to reduce the risk of disease spread from animals to humans; improving integrated land and seascape management; nature-based urban solutions; healthy and sustainable diets; and supporting indigenous food systems.
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