Report is also known as the Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health.
- It offers a scientific assessment of complex interconnections among five nexus elements – biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change - and explores response options to maximize co-benefits.
Key findings
- Unaccounted-for costs of current economic activity – reflecting impacts on nexus elements – are at least $10-25 trillion per year.
- Existence of such unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies, enhances private financial incentives to invest in nature damaging economic activities.
- Biodiversity decline per decade for last 30-50 years is 2-6%, reducing ability of ecosystems to sequester carbon and accelerating climate change.
- In last 50 years, global trends in indirect socio-economic drivers of biodiversity loss such as increasing waste, overconsumption and population growth intensify the direct drivers like land and sea-use change, pollution, invasive alien species etc.
- Unsustainable freshwater withdrawal, wetland degradation and forest loss have decreased water quality and climate change resilience.
- Around 50% of emerging infectious diseases are driven by interconnections between ecosystem, animal and human health.
Way ahead
- Adopting synergistic approaches restoring carbon-rich ecosystems forests, mangroves etc.
- Management of biodiversity to reduce risks of diseases spreading from animals to humans.
- Others: Reliance on urban nature-based solutions, knowledge of indigenous peoples, adopting sustainable agricultural practices, one health approach etc.
About Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
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