OVERVIEW

Climate change and environmental degradation are existential threats that the world faces today. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates with high confidence that global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) report indicated that a million species risk being lost if governments and other stakeholders take no action in the unsustainable depletion of our natural environment.

Biodiversity loss and the climate crisis are interdependent and they exacerbate each other. Addressing climate change without addressing biodiversity is therefore not possible. To overcome these challenges, proactive steps must be taken for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, seeking to realize synergies and co-benefits from planning and action.

There are several policy examples that demonstrate how these synergies and co-benefits can be realized. Most major economies (EU, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Canada and South Africa) have now committed to reaching “net-zero emissions” by 2050 or 2060. At the international level, the United Nations has announced 2021-2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The Decade, a global call to action, draws together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration from successful pilot initiatives. At the national level, large scale landscape restoration efforts including the Indian CAMPA and Ecological Fiscal Transfers have been noted as good examples of low-carbon rescue & recovery measures. There are also success stories on ecosystem based adaption in the form of nature-based solutions which offer unique ways to achieve human well-being and tackle climate change . Often these solutions are cost-effective, and simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits that help build resilience into cities, landscapes and seascapes, through locally adapted interventions. Nature based solutions have the potential for climate change adaptation and mitigation as well as biodiversity conservation.

In addition to the above efforts, measuring progress towards biodiversity and climate is equally important to map progress and move forward. In that respect, valuation of ecosystem services will be important to make nature’s values visible and drive investment decisions. Valuation helps decision makers to recognize, demonstrate and capture the wide range of benefits provided by ecosystems and biodiversity, across sectors such as agriculture. Capturing value involves the introduction of mechanisms that incorporate the values of ecosystems into decision-making through incentives and price signals, such as payments for ecosystem services, reforming environmentally harmful subsidies or introducing tax breaks for conservation. Moving ahead, it would be necessary that the embedded economic value of biodiversity and ecosystem health are recognized in mainstream economic policy and markets in order to incentivize sustainable practices and investments in conservation, livelihood diversification and development of critical safety nets for the vulnerable.