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Integrating Biodiversity and Eco-system Services
in the Post-2015 Development Agenda
B iodiversity
‘underpins ecosystem functioning and the provisioning of ecosystem
services’ necessary to create sustained well-being and prosperity for
all1.
However, ecosystems and biodiversity — the living fabric of this planet
are in rapid decline worldwide. This is the cumulative effect of human
activities such as commercial overexploitation, population pressure and
ill-informed policies. The intrinsic relation between biodiversity and
poverty has been largely ignored. Coral reefs demonstrate this issue
very well. The incessantly increasing problem of coral bleaching is
making nearly 500 million people vulnerable and marginalised who are
dependent on the reefs for their economic and social well-being.
We price what we value. However the benefits of
ecosystem services - food, fresh water, climate regulation, flood
and disease control are treated as free public goods. This economic
invisibility of nature in the current dominant model of growth is both a
symptom and a root cause of the problem. There is an urgent need to move
beyond this and account and track our natural capital – ecosystem
services.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) attempted to
bridge this divide by creating a specific goal on environmental
sustainability and recognising the importance of biodiversity for
development. The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) acknowledges the need
to address the issue of biodiversity loss as a means to alleviate
poverty and create prosperity for all. However, the MDGs have not been
able to reverse the trend in the loss of biodiversity as they have
failed to systemically inter-link biodiversity preservation and
conservation with its role in achieving other goals such as poverty
alleviation, hunger, nutrition etc. The result being that the
biodiversity target is only a ‘proxy for environmental sustainability’ 2.
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Case Study: Hiware
Bazaar
It presents one of the
best-known examples of using a development approach based on integrated
watershed management. It turned the misfortune of a village into an
ecological and economic success. In the 1970s, Hiware Bazaar situated in
the state of Maharashtra was a semi-arid village with degraded forests,
drying wells and infertile land (only 12% of the land was cultivable).
This created rampant poverty and unemployment encouraging large scale
migration to nearby cities. The village community however turned things
around in a matter of 5 years starting in 1995. They regenerated the
degraded village forests and catchments and restored watershed
ecosystems. The village was divided into three micro-watersheds in which
contour trenching, tree plantation and nala (drain) bunding were
executed. The result was a 73% reduction in poverty, an increase in
irrigated area from 70 hectares (in 1993) to 260 hectares (in 2006) and
an increase in livestock numbers from 20 (in 1998) to 340 (in 2003).
Hiware Bazaar is now an icon of ecological development called the
‘millionaire’s village’ with 54 millionaires and an average per
capita income that is twice the average of most of the rural villages.
Source: IDFC Foundation (2012). Hiware Bazar: A water-led
transformation of a village, Quarterly Research Note. |
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In order to generate sustainable development for all
and create requisite policies for action, there is need to understand
that ‘biodiversity is more than just a natural resource’3.
It is critical for human well-being and prosperity necessitating the
management of our ecosystem. The Post-2015 development agenda offers us
an opportunity to successfully integrate biodiversity and ecosystem by
explicitly recognising this relation and as an essential element of
earths’ life support system that needs protection to ensure
sustainability. The example provided in the box helps to highlight this
case.
The new framework needs to create a more equitable
and resilient development pathway that includes the poor who in turn are
dependent on the ecosystems for jobs and food. It will need to ask
pertinent questions such as how do we manage the risk of loss in
biodiversity borne by the poor. This calls for not only a stand-alone
goal on biodiversity but its integration with other goals and targets.
q
Anand Kumar
akumar3@devalt.org
Endnotes
1 Integrating Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in
the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Goal Structure, Target Areas and Means
of Implementation by Paul L. Lucas, Marcel T.J. Kok, Måns Nilsson and
Rob Alkemade
2 Biodiversity in the Post-2015 Development Agenda
and Sustainable Development Goals : Ecosystem Goods and Services for
Human Well-Being - Background paper for the Trondheim Conference
3 ibid
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