New Delhi: The issues of biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change are all interconnected and tackling these require integrated decision making by governments, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (IPBES) “Nexus Report” released on Tuesday (December 17).
The existing actions to tackle these challenges don’t address the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance, as per the report.
The Nexus Report
The IPBES is an independent intergovernmental body established in 2012 and comprises representatives of 147 governments that are members. It aims to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development. One of its main functions is to release assessment reports that summarise scientific evidence on these topics.
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The IPBES released its latest assessment report on the “Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health,” known as the Nexus Report, on December 17. This report, approved on December 16 by the 11th session of the IPBES plenary, and the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries from across the world, assessed the state of knowledge on past, present and possible future trends in the interlinkages among five ‘nexus’ elements – biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change. While the full seven-chapter report will be published only early next year, the summary for policymakers, which was released yesterday, lists the key findings of the report.
And the findings are not really comforting.
For the last 30-50 years, all assessed indicators show that biodiversity is declining by 2-6% per decade. Unsustainable agricultural practices have contributed to biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and air, water and land pollution with some systems such as fisheries approaching tipping points, the report noted.
Delaying action to tackle these issues will only make things worse, the report said. For instance, the costs of addressing biodiversity loss would double if delayed by ten years (e.g., from 2021 to 2030), and add an estimated minimum of $500 billion per year for addressing climate change, as per the report.
According to the report, the finance gaps to meet biodiversity needs are $0.3-1 trillion per year, and additional investment needs to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) most directly related to water, food, health and climate change are at least $4 trillion per year.
Developing countries bear the brunt
“There are persistent inequalities in food security, with 80 per cent of the undernourished concentrated in developing countries. Less diverse and unhealthy diets are a leading cause of non-communicable diseases globally,” per the report.
Current economic and financial systems are investing $7 trillion every year in activities that damage biodiversity and other nexus elements. As a result, more than half of the world’s population is living in areas that experience the highest impacts caused due to declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change.
Essentially, these negative impacts are affecting some of the most vulnerable populations. For instance, 41% of people live in areas that witnessed extremely strong declines in biodiversity between 2000 and 2010; 9% in areas that have experienced very high health burdens; and 5% in areas with high levels of malnutrition.
“These burdens disproportionately affect developing countries, including small island developing states, indigenous people and local communities as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries,” the report read.
But while it is crucial to stop biodiversity loss, improve water availability and quality as well as food security, human health outcomes and slow the rate of climate change, these would require “integrated and timely adoption of multiple response options that do not focus solely on a single nexus element but include combinations of effective biodiversity conservation (in marine, freshwater and terrestrial systems), ecosystem restoration and sustainable healthy diets,” the report noted.
The report also looked at future challenges, assessing 186 different scenarios from 52 separate studies, which project interactions between three or more of the nexus elements up to 2050 and 2100.
“While some response options bring benefits across all nexus elements, some are less costly to implement as well,” said Purnamita Dasgupta, chair professor, Environmental Economics, Institute of Economic Growth and coordinating lead author of the Nexus Report, in a press note.
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“Some responses may pose unintended consequences for some nexus elements while emphasising one element, but multiple co-benefits to at least three elements are mostly achievable,” Dasgupta added.
The finance response options that have been assessed in the report to support investments in nexus, and to minimise costs and damages from unintended consequences that arise from stand-alone, sectoral approaches is of particular relevance to developing countries, Dasgupta said.
Need for an integrated approach
While these findings are not new (the report is a compilation of studies that made these findings over several years), the report also says that existing actions by states and governments to address these challenges do not address the complexity of these interlinked problems and therefore results in “inconsistent governance”.
“Existing governance fails to address the complex, interconnected and interdependent challenges resulting from the pace and scale of environmental change and rising inequalities. Institutions that are fragmented and siloed and policies that are short-term, contradictory or non-inclusive, undermine the achievement of global policy frameworks,” the report said.
“We have to move decisions and actions beyond single-issue silos to better manage, govern and improve the impact of actions in one nexus element on other elements,” said Paula Harrison, co-chair of the assessment along with Pamela McElwee, in a press release.
And the “best way to bridge single issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making”, said McElwee. “‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated – moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals,” she added.