While solutions to climate change remain elusive, at least the world's policymakers have demonstrated an understanding for the risks posed by rising temperatures. Unfortunately, there is no similar awareness of the threat posed by biodiversity loss – a shortcoming that scientists are urgently seeking to rectify.
NORWICH – With the United Nations’ climate change conference underway in Bonn, Germany, rising global temperatures are once again at the top of the world’s agenda. But why care about the increase in temperature, if not because of its impact on life on Earth, including human life?
That is an important question to consider, in view of the relative lack of attention devoted to a closely related and equally important threat to human survival: the startling pace of global biodiversity loss.
The availability of food, water, and energy – fundamental building blocks of every country’s security – depends on healthy, robust, and diverse ecosystems, and on the life that inhabits them. But, as a result of human activities, planetary biodiversity is now declining faster than at any point in history. Many policymakers, however, have yet to recognize that biodiversity loss is just as serious a threat as rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events.
This lack of sufficient attention comes despite international commitments to protect biodiversity. In October 2010, global leaders met in Aichi, Japan, where they produced the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which included 20 ambitious targets – such as halving global habitat loss and ending overfishing – that signatories agreed to meet by 2020. Safeguarding biodiversity is also specifically included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yet progress toward these global biodiversity goals is likely to fall dangerously short of what is needed to ensure an acceptable future for all.
Policymakers have largely agreed on the importance of holding the increase in global temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels – the goal of the Paris climate agreement. But too few leaders have shown any sense of urgency about stemming biodiversity losses. The sustainable future we want depends on ending this indifference.
Toward that end, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which I chair, will release a series of landmark reports next March on the implications of biodiversity decline. Prepared over three years by more than 550 experts from some 100 countries, these expert assessments will cover four world regions: the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe and Central Asia. A fifth report will address the state of land degradation and restoration at regional and global levels.
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The reports will highlight trends and plausible futures, outlining the best policy options available to slow the degradation of ecosystems, from coral reefs to rainforests. Taken together, the IPBES assessments will represent the global scientific community’s consensus view on the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Moreover, the reports will highlight the close links between biodiversity loss and climate change, which should be addressed simultaneously. The world will not be able to meet the goals of the Paris agreement – or many of the SDGs, for that matter – unless it takes into account the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Today, most governments separate their environmental authorities from those focusing on energy, agriculture, and planning. This makes it difficult to address climate change or biodiversity losses in a holistic way. New types of innovative governance structures are needed to bridge these policy silos.
After the release of IPBES regional reports next year, a global assessment building on them will be published in 2019. This will be the first global overview of biodiversity and ecosystem services since the authoritative Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005. It will examine the health of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, and the impact of factors including acidification, rising sea surface temperatures, trade, invasive species, overfishing, pollution, and land use changes.
The success of efforts to reverse unsustainable uses of the world’s natural assets will require policymakers to reconsider the value of biodiversity for their people, environments, and economies. But the first step is ensuring that we have the best peer-reviewed knowledge available to make sound decisions; the forthcoming IPBES assessments will move us in that direction.
If the full consequences of climate change are to be addressed in our lifetime, we must recognize that human activity is doing more than just adding a few degrees of temperature to the annual forecast. By early next year, we will have the data on biodiversity and ecosystem services to prove it, and the policy options to change course.
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Kishore Mahbubani
offers advice to Western diplomats attempting to engage with Asia, identifies risks to the region’s stability, highlights Singapore’s lessons for developing-country leaders, and more.
The implications of the deepening Sino-American rift are far-reaching, because several of the world’s most pressing economic problems can be solved only with contributions from both countries. And, to address global challenges, active cooperation between the two economic powers is indispensable.
hopes that political will on both sides catches up with the opporunities for cooperation that now exist.
If the new "industrial strategy" is offering ideas for better public governance, it is useful. But it becomes positively dangerous when it turns to the private sector, where state interventions inevitably undermine competition, disrupt price signals, and dampen the motivation to innovate.
sees little reason to support the case for renewed government interventions in the private sector.
Although multilateral efforts to address climate change are not well served by deepening geopolitical rivalries or the apparent trend toward global economic fragmentation, that doesn’t mean governments have abandoned the pursuit of net-zero emissions. Instead, the process has become more competitive – and more complex.
considers the international political dynamics of current energy, trade, and environmental policies.
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NORWICH – With the United Nations’ climate change conference underway in Bonn, Germany, rising global temperatures are once again at the top of the world’s agenda. But why care about the increase in temperature, if not because of its impact on life on Earth, including human life?
That is an important question to consider, in view of the relative lack of attention devoted to a closely related and equally important threat to human survival: the startling pace of global biodiversity loss.
The availability of food, water, and energy – fundamental building blocks of every country’s security – depends on healthy, robust, and diverse ecosystems, and on the life that inhabits them. But, as a result of human activities, planetary biodiversity is now declining faster than at any point in history. Many policymakers, however, have yet to recognize that biodiversity loss is just as serious a threat as rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events.
This lack of sufficient attention comes despite international commitments to protect biodiversity. In October 2010, global leaders met in Aichi, Japan, where they produced the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which included 20 ambitious targets – such as halving global habitat loss and ending overfishing – that signatories agreed to meet by 2020. Safeguarding biodiversity is also specifically included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yet progress toward these global biodiversity goals is likely to fall dangerously short of what is needed to ensure an acceptable future for all.
Policymakers have largely agreed on the importance of holding the increase in global temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels – the goal of the Paris climate agreement. But too few leaders have shown any sense of urgency about stemming biodiversity losses. The sustainable future we want depends on ending this indifference.
Toward that end, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which I chair, will release a series of landmark reports next March on the implications of biodiversity decline. Prepared over three years by more than 550 experts from some 100 countries, these expert assessments will cover four world regions: the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe and Central Asia. A fifth report will address the state of land degradation and restoration at regional and global levels.
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Project Syndicate is returning to Climate Week NYC with an even more expansive program. Join us live on September 22 as we welcome speakers from around the world at our studio in Manhattan to address critical dimensions of the climate debate.
Register Now
The reports will highlight trends and plausible futures, outlining the best policy options available to slow the degradation of ecosystems, from coral reefs to rainforests. Taken together, the IPBES assessments will represent the global scientific community’s consensus view on the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Moreover, the reports will highlight the close links between biodiversity loss and climate change, which should be addressed simultaneously. The world will not be able to meet the goals of the Paris agreement – or many of the SDGs, for that matter – unless it takes into account the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Today, most governments separate their environmental authorities from those focusing on energy, agriculture, and planning. This makes it difficult to address climate change or biodiversity losses in a holistic way. New types of innovative governance structures are needed to bridge these policy silos.
After the release of IPBES regional reports next year, a global assessment building on them will be published in 2019. This will be the first global overview of biodiversity and ecosystem services since the authoritative Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005. It will examine the health of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, and the impact of factors including acidification, rising sea surface temperatures, trade, invasive species, overfishing, pollution, and land use changes.
The success of efforts to reverse unsustainable uses of the world’s natural assets will require policymakers to reconsider the value of biodiversity for their people, environments, and economies. But the first step is ensuring that we have the best peer-reviewed knowledge available to make sound decisions; the forthcoming IPBES assessments will move us in that direction.
If the full consequences of climate change are to be addressed in our lifetime, we must recognize that human activity is doing more than just adding a few degrees of temperature to the annual forecast. By early next year, we will have the data on biodiversity and ecosystem services to prove it, and the policy options to change course.