Environment in a Crisis

Nature must be central: Researchers show how its protection can be combined with economic stimuli – in the background the Financial District in New York. Photo: Pamela MacElwee

Nations should include the protection of nature into their Covid-19 pandemic recovery plans, researchers demand

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts on 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”, says Rupert Baumgartner, one of the lead authors. In this perspective, researchers 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. The paper, by economists, anthropologists and environmental scientists at many institutions on three continents, is published in the journal One Earth. It explores the changes in global economic systems – including incentives, regulations, fiscal policy and employment programs – that are necessary to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and move toward those supporting ecosystem resilience.

Publication:
“Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss”, in: One Earth, in press

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