Fast declining biodiversity has dramatic impacts on food security, water quality/availability and health

A landmark new report was launched today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

The report states that biodiversity – the richness and variety of all life on Earth – is declining at every level from global to local, and across every region. These ongoing declines in nature, largely as a result of human activity, including climate change, have direct and dire impacts on food security and nutrition, water quality and availability, health and wellbeing outcomes, resilience to climate change and almost all of nature’s other contributions to people.

The report highlights that more than half of global gross domestic product – more than $50 trillion of annual economic activity around the world – is moderately to highly dependent on nature. “But current decision-making has prioritized short-term financial returns while ignoring costs to nature, and failed to hold actors to account for negative economic pressures on the natural world. It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25 trillion per year,” said Prof. McElwee.

“Another key message from the report is that the increasingly negative effects of intertwined global crises have very unequal impacts, disproportionately affecting some more than others,” said Prof. Harrison.

More than half of the world’s population is living in areas experiencing the highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change. These burdens especially affect developing countries, including small island developing states, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries.

Key Take Aways:

• Biodiversity is essential to our very existence, supporting our water and food supplies, our health and the stability of the climate. Biodiversity is declining in all regions of the world and at all spatial scales, impacting ecosystem functioning, water availability and quality, food security and nutrition, human, plant and animal health and resilience to the impacts of climate change. Biodiversity loss and climate change are interdependent and produce compounding impacts and impacts that threaten human health and human well- being.
• In the last 50 years global trends in a wide range of indirect drivers have intensified direct drivers of biodiversity loss and caused negative outcomes for biodiversity, water availability and quality, food security and nutrition, health and contributed to climate change.
• Societal, economic and policy decisions that prioritize short-term benefits and financial returns for a small number of people while ignoring negative impacts on biodiversity and other nexus elements lead to unequal human well-being outcomes. Existing governance approaches have often failed to account for and address these negative impacts in degrading nature, with the negative impacts disproportionately affecting the well-being of some more than others.
• Continuation of current trends in direct and indirect drivers will result in substantial negative outcomes for biodiversity, water availability and quality, food security and human health, while exacerbating climate change. Scenarios that prioritize objectives for a single element of the nexus without regard to other elements (i.e., solely for biodiversity, water, food, human health or climate change) will result in trade-offs across the nexus.
• Nexus-wide benefits with positive outcomes for people and nature are feasible in the future, but achieving the highest levels of positive outcomes across all nexus elements is challenging. Scenarios that achieve balanced benefits across the nexus elements tend to include response options that effectively conserve, restore and sustainably use and manage ecosystems, reduce pollution across marine, freshwater and terrestrial realms, adopt sustainable healthy diets and mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Source: https://www.ipbes.net/nexus/media-release
Full Report: https://ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES11Media/album/MGKB5