View previous stories
	Economic Benefits of Protecting 30% of Planet’s Land and Ocean Outweigh the Costs at least 5-to-1 by Campaign for Nature, agencies   In the most comprehensive report to date on the economic implications of protecting nature, over 100 economists and scientists find that the global economy would benefit from the establishment of far more protected areas on land and at sea than exist today.   The report considers various scenarios of protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean to find that the benefits outweigh the costs by a ratio of at least 5-to-1. The report offers new evidence that the nature conservation sector drives economic growth, delivers key non-monetary benefits and is a net contributor to a resilient global economy.   The findings follow growing scientific evidence that at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean must be protected to address the alarming collapse of the natural world, which now threatens up to one million species with extinction.   With such clear economic and scientific data, momentum continues to build for a landmark global agreement that would include the 30% protection target.   The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has included this 30% protected area goal in its draft 10-year strategy, which is expected to be finalized and approved by the Convention’s 196 parties next year in Kunming, China.   This new independent report, “Protecting 30% of the planet for nature: costs, benefits and economic implications,” is the first ever analysis of protected area impacts across multiple economic sectors, including agriculture, fisheries, and forestry in addition to the nature conservation sector.   The report measures the financial impacts of protected areas on the global economy and non-monetary benefits like ecosystem services, including climate change mitigation, flood protection, clean water provision and soil conservation.   Across all measures, the experts find that the benefits are greater when more nature is protected as opposed to maintaining the status quo.   Currently, roughly 15% of the world’s land and 7% of the ocean has some degree of protection. The report finds that the additional protections would lead to an average of $250 billion in increased economic output annually and an average of $350 billion in improved ecosystem services annually compared with the status quo.   The nature conservation sector has been one of the fastest growing sectors in recent years and, according to the report, is projected to grow 4-6% per year compared to less than 1% for agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, after the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.   Protecting natural areas also provides significant mental and physical health benefits and reduces the risk of new zoonotic disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, a value that has not yet been quantified despite the extraordinarily high economic costs of the pandemic.   A recent study estimated the economic value of protected areas based on the improved mental health of visitors to be $6 trillion annually.   “Our report shows that protection in today’s economy brings in more revenue than the alternatives and likely adds revenue to agriculture and forestry, while helping prevent climate change, water crises, biodiversity loss and disease. Increasing nature protection is sound policy for governments juggling multiple interests. You cannot put a price tag on nature — but the economic numbers point to its protection,” said Anthony Waldron, the lead author of the report and researcher focused on conservation finance, global species loss and sustainable agriculture.   The report’s authors find that obtaining the substantial benefits of protecting 30% of the planet’s land and ocean, requires an average annual investment of roughly $140 billion by 2030. The world currently invests just over $24 billion per year in protected areas.   “This investment pales in comparison to the economic benefits that additional protected areas would deliver and to the far larger financial support currently given to other sectors,” said Enric Sala, co-author of this report, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and the author of the forthcoming book The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild.   “Investing to protect nature would represent less than one-third of the amount that governments spend on subsidies to activities that destroy nature. It would represent 0.16% of global GDP and require less investment than the world spends on video games every year.”   The Campaign for Nature (CFN), which commissioned this report, is working with a growing coalition of over 100 conservation organizations, and scientists around the world in support of the 30%+ target, and increased financial support for conservation. CFN is also working with Indigenous leaders to ensure full respect for Indigenous rights and free, prior, and informed consent.   CFN recommends that funding comes from all sources, including official development assistance, governments’ domestic budgets, climate financing directed to nature-based solutions, philanthropies, corporations, and new sources of revenue or savings through regulatory and subsidy changes.   As 70-90% of the cost would be focused on low and middle income countries because of the location of the world’s most threatened biodiversity, these countries will require financial assistance from multiple sources.   http://www.campaignfornature.org/protecting-30-of-the-planet-for-nature-economic-analysis   * The Campaign for Nature works with scientists, Indigenous Peoples, and a growing coalition of over 100 conservation organizations around the world who are calling on policymakers to commit to clear and ambitious targets to be agreed upon at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China in 2021 to protect at least 30 percent of the planet by 2030 and working with Indigenous leaders to ensure full respect for Indigenous rights.   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2020/oct/28/the-worlds-banks-must-start-to-value-nature-and-stop-paying-for-its-destruction-aoe http://portfolio.earth/ http://ipbes.net/pandemics http://www.leaderspledgefornature.org/ http://fornature.undp.org/content/fornature/en/home/open-letter.html http://www.socialeurope.eu/europes-hidden-biodiversity-crisis http://livingplanet.panda.org/en-gb/ http://www.france24.com/en/20200915-world-missing-all-targets-to-save-nature-un-warns http://www.dw.com/en/global-biodiversity-outlook-targets-extinction/a-54932895 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/every-global-target-to-stem-destruction-of-nature-by-2020-missed-un-report-aoe http://www.cbd.int/gbo5 http://www.iied.org/act-nature-demand-hundreds-organisations-unprecedented-call-world-leaders   * Summary for Policymakers of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (60pp): http://bit.ly/2RouNYe   * IPCC World must not exceed 1.5C Summary (34pp): http://bit.ly/2y7hz9b http://www.ipcc.ch/reports Visit the related web page
	The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 by Antonio Guterres Secretary-General, United Nations   July 2020   The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched in 2015 to end poverty and set the world on a path of peace, prosperity and opportunity for all on a healthy planet. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demand nothing short of a transformation of the financial, economic and political systems that govern our societies today to guarantee the human rights of all.   They require immense political will and ambitious action by all stakeholders. But, as Member States recognized at the SDGs Summit held last September, global efforts to date have been insufficient to deliver the change we need, jeopardizing the Agenda’s promise to current and future generations.   The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 brings together the latest data to show us that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, progress remained uneven and we were not on track to meet the Goals by 2030. Some gains were visible: the share of children and youth out of school had fallen; the incidence of many communicable diseases was in decline; access to safely managed drinking water had improved; and women’s representation in leadership roles was increasing.   At the same time, the number of people suffering from food insecurity was on the rise, the natural environment continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate, and dramatic levels of inequality persisted in all regions. Change was still not happening at the speed or scale required.   Now, due to COVID-19, an unprecedented health, economic and social crisis is threatening lives and livelihoods, making the achievement of Goals even more challenging. As of the beginning of June, the death toll had surpassed 400,000 and was continuing to climb, with almost no country spared. Health systems in many countries have been driven to the brink of collapse. The livelihood of half the global workforce has been severely affected. More than 1.6 billion students are out of school and tens of millions of people are being pushed back into extreme poverty and hunger, erasing the modest progress made in recent years.   Although the Novel Coronavirus affects every person and community, it does not do so equally. Instead, it has exposed and exacerbated existing inequalities and injustices. In advanced economies, fatality rates have been highest among marginalized groups.   In developing countries, the most vulnerable – including those employed in the informal economy, older people, children, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, migrants and refugees – risk being hit even harder.   Across the globe, young people are being disproportionately affected, particularly in the world of work. Women and girls are facing new barriers and new threats, ranging from a shadow pandemic of violence to additional burdens of unpaid care work.   Far from undermining the case for the SDGs, the root causes and uneven impacts of COVID-19 demonstrate precisely why we need the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and underscore the urgency of their implementation. I have therefore consistently called for a coordinated and comprehensive international response and recovery effort, based on sound data and science and guided by the Sustainable Development Goals.   Health systems must be urgently strengthened in countries that are at greatest risk, with increased capacity for testing, tracing and treatment. Universal access to treatments and vaccines, when they become available, is essential.   A large-scale multilateral response is needed to ensure that developing countries have the resources they need to protect households and businesses. Recovery packages must facilitate the shift to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy and support universal access to quality public services.   At the start of this Decade of Action to deliver the SDGs, I call for renewed ambition, mobilization, leadership and collective action, not just to beat COVID-19 but to recover better, together – winning the race against climate change, decisively tackling poverty and inequality, truly empowering all women and girls and creating more inclusive and equitable societies everywhere.   http://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/ http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ http://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/2020/national-reports-on-the-2030-agenda-what-do-they-reveal/ http://www.socialwatch.org/node/18522 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/ http://www.2030spotlight.org/en http://www.unsdsn.org/news-events http://bit.ly/3oLN55w   July 2020   UN Poverty expert underlines the ‘anguish, stress and disempowerment’ of poverty. (UN News, agencies)   More people are expected to fall into extreme poverty because of COVID-19, the UN Human Rights Council has heard as a leading rights expert criticized “greatly exaggerated” claims of global poverty eradication between 1990 and 2015.   Highlighting his predecessor Philip Alstom’s final report, UN-appointed independent Special Rapporteur Olivier de Schutter, questioned the World Bank’s international poverty line (IPL) – which is subsisting on $1.90 per day.   “The international poverty line is of course well below the national poverty lines of most countries, and accordingly generates dramatically lower numbers in poverty.”   Highlighting calls to adopt a much more realistic measure of poverty than the IPL baseline amount, the Special Rapporteur noted that it could be based on meeting people’s basic needs – and particularly children’s - which the Council heard were twice as likely as adults to be living in poverty.   “If you speak to people in poverty and ask them about their experience of poverty, they will tell you about the anguish, the stress, the disempowerment, the discrimination and the social and institutional abuse”, he said, before urging Member States to focus less on economic growth solely as a means to reduce poverty, and more on the reduction of inequalities and the redistribution of wealth.   The report states that the pandemic will push 176 million more people into extreme poverty, compounding long-standing neglect of low-income people, including women, migrant workers and refugees. The international community's poor record on tackling poverty, inequality and disregard for human life far precede this pandemic, the report says.   "Many world leaders, economists, and pundits have enthusiastically promoted a self-congratulatory message, proclaiming progress against poverty to be one of the greatest human achievements of our time," the report says. "The reality is that billions face few opportunities, countless indignities, unnecessary hunger and preventable death, and do not enjoy basic human rights."   "In too many cases, the promised benefits of growth either don't materialise or aren't shared," the report says. "The global economy has doubled since the end of the Cold War, yet half the world lives under $5.50 a day, primarily because the benefits of growth have largely gone to the wealthiest."   The world needs new strategies, genuine mobilisation, empowerment and accountability "to avoid sleepwalking towards failure while releasing more bland reports", the report says.   Tax justice is key to ensure governments have the money needed for social protection: in 2015, multinationals shifted an estimated 40 percent of their profits to tax havens, while global corporate tax rates have fallen from an average of 40.38 percent in 1980 to 24.18 percent in 2019. De Schutter also called for establishment of a social protection fund to help countries give the poorest basic social security guarantees.   "Growth alone, without far more robust redistribution of wealth, would fail to effectively tackle poverty," said De Schutter. "Based on historic growth rates, it would take 200 years to eradicate poverty under a $5 a day line and would require a 173-fold increase in global GDP." That, he added, is "an entirely unrealistic prospect, not least since it does not take into account the environmental degradation associated to the economic growth, or the impacts of climate change on poverty itself".   In addition, States “have tolerated aggressive practices of tax avoidance by transnational corporations” which had cost States $650 billion per year, the Special Rapporteur’s findings suggest, in addition to deregulating labour markets and privatising public services, which had led to an increase in the cost to users.   "I welcome this report, which illustrates that poverty is not a matter only of low incomes," said De Schutter. "It's a matter of disempowerment, of institutional and social abuse, and of discrimination. It is the price we pay for societies that exclude people whose contributions are not recognised. Eradicating poverty means building inclusive societies that shift from a charity approach to a rights-based empowering approach."   * Access the report: http://bit.ly/2Z8s5Lo   http://bit.ly/2CiaBDg http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session44/Pages/ListReports.aspx http://srpoverty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alston-Poverty-Report-FINAL.pdf http://srpoverty.org/ http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/07/we-squandered-a-decade-world-losing-fight-against-poverty-says-un-academic http://news.trust.org/item/20200707170510-1izgn/ http://www.un.org/pga/74/wp-content/uploads/sites/99/2020/05/PGA-Alliance-for-Poverty-Eradication-1-1.pdf http://srpoverty.org/2020/07/01/statement-in-support-of-the-alliance-for-poverty-eradication/ Visit the related web page
	View more stories