Author: Andrea WulfRecommended by CFA Member: Lorenzo Rosenzweig"Andrea Wulf brings Alexander von Humboldt and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science."A new global study has found that only 2.5 percent of tropical reefs are formally protected and conserved through laws and regulations. These numbers are significantly lower than previous estimates, and highlight an urgent need for governments, communities, and partnering organizations to create and expand marine reserves to protect these ecosystems which support more than 500 million people worldwide.
Photo: The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey
In this report, the Campaign for Nature has collated evidence on how protected areas (e.g. national parks, marine protected areas) are in many cases central to local and national economies, and present a strong case for stimulus aid. They need emergency assistance to prevent laying off staff and breaking longstanding covenants with local communities, which also need support because the near shutdown of protected areas has left them without many basic services. Tourism to protected areas is often the main driver of jobs and income in rural and coastal communities, and protected area tourism revenues fund local community clinics, job training, and social safety nets. Despite this concerning evidence, the nature-based economy has been overlooked in stimulus discussions so far.
This article makes the case for mainstreaming biodiversity in development and stimulus packages as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Making strong arguments supporting the inclusion of climate and biodiversity-positive elements, the piece focuses on the 750 billion euro "European Green Deal" as an example of the kind of longer-term, visionary thinking that is critically needed at this moment.
Ocean-based industries are worth at least 3.5% of global GDP, a value the OECD predicted will double by 2030. More than 3 billion people rely on the ocean for their livelihoods and more than 350 million jobs are linked to the ocean worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic is putting this ocean economy in peril.
The encouraging news is that there are solutions that can improve our ocean while growing economies. A sustainable ocean economy — premised on effective protection, sustainable production and equitable prosperity — should be at the heart of building back better in the wake of COVID-19.
Photo: Knut Troim/Unsplash
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.
Photo: The Ocean Agency
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were designed to reconcile environmental protection with socioeconomic development. This study has compared SDG indicators to a suite of external measures, showing that while most countries are progressing well towards environmental SDGs, this has little relationship with actual biodiversity conservation, and instead better represents socioeconomic development. If this continues, the SDGs will likely serve as a smokescreen for further environmental destruction throughout the decade.
The sustainable development of many economies in Asia and the Pacific depends on healthy oceans.
The “blue economy” is an emerging concept that promotes the sustainability of economic activities that use or affect ocean resources.
Ocean finance is essential to transition to a blue economy by defining standards and metrics, developing a pipeline of bankable ocean investments, innovating finance instruments, mobilizing capital, aligning taxes and subsidies, and strengthening policy, knowledge, and capacity.
Explore OECD’s Policies in practice, demonstrating real-world ocean policy action. Search for examples from all over the globe extracted from OECD’s cross-cutting ocean-related publications, including marine biodiversity and ecosystem services, coastal adaptation and resilience, fisheries and aquaculture, marine plastics pollution and sustainable ocean finance.
In this article, Tracey Cumming, Technical Advisor at the UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), argues that safeguarding nature requires more than just conservation spending - and explores how the economic rules of the game must be transformed to properly incentivise sustainability.
This report aims to provide an overview of the current status of protected area finance in the Southern and Eastern African region, covering 24 countries, to understand the extent of the challenge. The report also outlines the different innovative finance mechanisms that might be used to help decrease the funding gap. This report is meant to support protected area authorities and governments in understanding mechanisms for increasing funding for conservation management and to help the International Union for the Conservation of Nature design effective programmes that will help mitigate funding gaps and sustainability challenges for protected areas in Africa and support the capacity development of protected area managers.
This solution addresses poverty reduction in Zanzibar for its coastal communities through a more sustainable management of their natural resources, additional income, and consequently, better quality of life. The approach of implementing ecological aqua farming of bath sponges with women in coastal communites promotes healthy economic growth, reduces environmental pressure and threats to marine life and othernatural wildlife, improves public health and strenghtens the economic and social status of women.
This special Editorial in PARKS Journal today provides a snapshot of how protected and conserved areas around the world are being impacted by COVID-19. For many protected and conserved areas, negative impacts on management capacity, budgets and effectiveness are significant, as are impacts on the livelihoods of communities living in and around these areas. The Editorial provides a commentary on how effectively and equitably managed systems of protected and conserved areas can be part of the response to the pandemic that both lessens the chance of a recurrence of similar events and builds a more sustainable future for people and nature.
Read more (Click on the link "Editorial Essay: COVID-19 and protected and conserved areas" to download the PDF)
In this report, Convergence, DFID and stakeholders, re-visit Convergence’s 2018 Report: Who is the Private Sector? Convergence has convened a group of over 20 leading global privates sector investors to reflect on the current state of blended finance to identify key recommendations needed to accelerate the market.
Land use is central to many of the environmental and socio-economic issues facing society today. This OECD report examines on-going challenges for aligning land-use policy with climate, biodiversity and food objectives, and the opportunities to enhance the sustainability of land-use systems. It looks at six countries – Brazil, France, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico and New Zealand – with relatively large agricultural and forestry sectors and associated greenhouse gas emissions, many of which also host globally important biodiversity. Drawing on these countries’ relevant national strategies and plans, institutional co-ordination and policy instruments, the report provides good practice insights on how to better align land use decision-making processes and to achieve stronger coherence between land use, climate, ecosystems and food objectives.
Author: Judith D. SchwartzRecommended by: Lorenzo Rosenzweig"In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems―climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity―there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil."
Author: William MacaskillRecommended by: Lorenzo Rosenzweig"Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately, we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, even our best intentions often lead to ineffective—and sometimes downright harmful—outcomes. How can we do better?While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it’s not enough to simply do good; we must do good better."
Author: Carol SanfordRecommended by (CFA Member): Lorenzo Rosenzweig"Courageous leaders today are calling for a disruptive yet effective way of working: one that unlocks significant new levels of innovation, delivers enduring financial results, and creates exceptional customer loyalty while simultaneously building human capacity to contribute to on-going positive change. The good news is there is a proven, but infrequently taken, path.Through a fundamentally contrasting paradigm, Carol Sanford shows leaders why today's so-called business "best practices" undermine success-and then, how to transform their business into something so flexible, so innovative, so developmental, it becomes virtually non-displaceable in the market.The Regenerative Business is built by connecting every person in the business to the "essential core" of that business - its unique foundation for innovation and market power. This provides the fulcrum for an organizational culture that embraces the internal destabilization and discomfort that comes with responding creatively to the unfamiliar. The payoff for doing so is a motivated and innovative workforce that is prepared to take a business to the top of its industry - and stay there."Author: Andrea WulfRecommended by CFA Member: Lorenzo Rosenzweig"Andrea Wulf brings Alexander von Humboldt and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science."