Integrated Solutions for Biodiversity, Climate Change and Poverty
Summary
The rational for this Policy Brief is to make clear the vital benefits of integrating biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management by taking the Ecosystemsbased Adaptation approach along with the Green Economy Initiative to achieve equitable multiple ‘win-win’ objectives to ensure the continued well-being of human society in the future.
Biodiversity is the variety of all life, from genes to species that form the complex interactions of life and habitats that make up ecosystems. Biodiversity is intimately linked to the earth’s climate and inevitably to climate change as it is the foundation for the natural processes of climate regulation. Biodiversity and poverty are also inextricably connected. Changes to ecosystems influence both the climate and people’s ability to cope with its adverse impacts. In return, climate change and
people’s responses to it, affect biodiversity.
Understanding these inter-relationships clearly shows that conserving and managing biodiversity protects the resilience
of natural systems and so helps all people, particularly the most vulnerable, to cope with a shifting global climate. This increasing dependency of human society on biodiversity and ecosystems services is occurring at a time when biodiversity is suffering a considerable loss.
It is estimated that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be1. Such extinction rates have already been seen as exceeding the ‘safe limits’ for a viable human society2. Therefore urgent support is needed to develop local solutions to biodiversity loss which also provide benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and especially poverty alleviation and economic growth.
Towards the end of 2010 there exists a significant opportunity for major players to embrace an integrated solution by tackling in a coordinated fashion these two most important environmental issues of biodiversity loss and climate change. The
year 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, and in October the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity convene their 10th meeting in Nagoya, Japan. Shortly afterwards, the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC takes place in Mexico to further negotiate strategies to deal with climate change. UNEP recommends that the CBD be strengthened to optimise biodiversity conservation for climate change mitigation and adaptation and that the UNFCCC builds on the increasing recognition that ecosystems play a vital role in climate regulation.
United Nations Environment Programme
P.O. Box 30552 Nairobi 00100 Kenya
Tel: +254-20-762 3753
Fax: +254-20-762 3917
Email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: www.unep.org/depi
