Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts to both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions. In this Perspective, we discuss a number of tools across a range of actors for both short-term stimulus measures and longer-term revamping of global, national, and local economies that take biodiversity into account. These include measures to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and towards those supporting ecosystem resilience, including through incentives, regulations, fiscal policy and employment programs. By treating the crisis as an opportunity to reset the global economy, we have a chance to reverse decades of biodiversity and ecosystem losses.

Biodiversity conservation as infectious disease prevention: why a social-ecological perspective is essential

“…Leading scientific experts of IPBES demand the reduction of spillover opportunities of new pathogens from wildlife to humans by limiting human encroachment into biodiverse habitats, and suggest to couple financial stimulus in response to COVID-19 with biodiversity conservation measures (McElwee et al, 2020;Settele et al, 2020). The demand was taken up by other UN bodies (Andersen, 2020;UN News, 2020).…”

Corona-Triggered Global Macroeconomic Crisis of the Early 2020s

“…The revival of industrial manufacturing of a scale took place almost exclusively in China and associated ASEAN Southeast Asian nations to the levels comparable to December 2019. This was quite a surprising development, where newly unleashed expectations on “ conditionality ” of unfreezing many of less developed world regions arose [ 67 ]. This means that temporary policymakers’ tax-release measures and postponed fiscal duties are leading to the accumulation of serious debt by companies.…”

Implications of COVID-19 on progress in the UN Conventions on biodiversity and climate change

“…Some national governments and politicians may argue that environmental action is less pressing, as they turn inward to focus on investments for health services, the economy, and welfare while undermining environmental protections (Hanna et al, 2020; Helm, 2020; McKee & Stuckler, 2020). Indeed, only a limited number of countries have included climate or biodiversity measures in their recovery packages, and a number have introduced measures that reduce environmental taxes or regulatory enforcement (McElwee et al, 2020). Developing countries may be particularly affected, as budgets for climate and biodiversity programs are cut or realigned to COVID-19 response.…”