UNEP-WCMC experts lead chapters on policy options and biodiversity finance in landmark Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Nexus Report. 

Environmental, social and economic crises – such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change – are all interconnected. Effective solutions do not attempt to solve each issue independently, instead they holistically address the linkages between problems. 

A landmark new report was launched today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report – offers decision-makers around the world the most comprehensive scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores dozens of specific response options to maximize co-benefits from action across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

Approved on Monday 16 December by the 11th session of the IPBES Plenary, composed of representatives of the 147 Governments that are members of IPBES, the report is the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries across all regions of the world. It finds that existing actions to address these challenges fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance. 

UNEP-WCMC experts, Samantha Hill, James Vause and Sebastian Dunnett attended the Plenary session as authors on two chapters of the assessment, focused on response options for different stakeholders, and on the wider economic considerations related to nature. 

“Biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food security, human health, and climate change are not isolated issues. They are indivisible, interrelated and interdependent. As they are intricately linked when one falters, the others follow. The IPBES Nexus Assessment is the first comprehensive global assessment that looks at the interlinkages between these crises and identifies solutions”

Inger Anderson, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme

Past and current challenges 

The report states that biodiversity is declining at every level from global to local, and across every region. These ongoing declines in nature, driven by human activity have direct and dire impacts on food security and nutrition, water quality and availability, health and wellbeing outcomes, resilience to climate change and almost all of nature’s other contributions to people. 

The Nexus Report builds on previous IPBES reports, in particular the 2022 Values Assessment Report and the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss as being land- and sea-use change, unsustainable exploitation, invasive alien species, climate change and pollution. The Nexus Report further underscores how indirect socioeconomic drivers, such as increasing waste, overconsumption and population growth, intensify the direct drivers – worsening impacts on all parts of the nexus. The majority of 12 assessed indicators across these indirect drivers – such as GDP, population levels and overall food supply, have all increased and many have accelerated since 2001. 

The report highlights that more than half of global gross domestic product – over USD 50 trillion of annual economic activity around the world – is moderately to highly dependent on nature. Companies depend on benefits from nature. Without them, they would be unable to operate, however, their dependencies and impacts on biodiversity are not always accounted for. 

The report highlights estimates that the unaccounted-for impacts of economic activity are in the range of USD 10-25 trillion per year. The existence of such unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities that have negative impacts on biodiversity (approximately USD 1.7 trillion per year), enhances private financial incentives to invest in economic activities that cause direct damage to nature (approximately USD 5.3 trillion per year), in spite of growing evidence of biophysical risks to economic progress and financial stability. 

UNEP-WCMC Lead Economist James Vause provides an economic overview in Chapter 6 of the Nexus assessment, highlighting the importance of transformative policy on issues such as subsidy reform and biodiversity finance to enable action. Delaying the actions needed to meet global policy goals for nature and people will also increase the costs of delivering it. Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs – and raises the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinctions, or ecosystem collapse. Delayed action on climate change adds at least USD 500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets. 

Unequal impacts and need for inclusive decision-making 

The highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability, food security, increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change affect developing countries, including small island developing states, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries. Over 40 per cent of people live in areas that saw extremely strong declines in biodiversity between 2000 and 2010, nine per cent in areas that have experienced very high health burdens and five per cent in areas with high levels of malnutrition. 

Some efforts – such as research and innovation, education and environmental regulations – have been partially successful in improving trends across nexus elements, but the report finds these are unlikely to succeed without addressing interlinkages more fully and tackling indirect drivers like trade and consumption. Decision-making that is more inclusive, with a particular focus on equity, can help ensure those most affected are included in solutions, in addition to larger economic and financial reforms. 

Future scenarios 

The Nexus report also examines future challenges – assessing 186 different scenarios from 52 separate studies, which explore interactions between three or more of the nexus elements, mostly covering the periods up to 2050 and 2100. 

A key message from this analysis is that if current “business as usual” trends in direct and indirect drivers of change continue, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health – with worsening climate change and increasing challenges to meet global policy goals. 

An important aim of IPBES work is to provide the science and evidence needed to support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Nexus Report shows that scenarios focusing on synergies among biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change have the best likely outcomes for the SDGs – and that focusing on addressing the challenges in just one sector – such as food, biodiversity or climate change in isolation – seriously limits the chances of meeting other goals. 

Response options 

The report shows that there are a significant number of available responses to sustainably manage across biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change, some of which are also low cost. 

The authors present more than 70 of these ‘response options’ to help manage the nexus elements synergistically, representing 10 broad categories of action. These are expanded on in Chapter 5, led by UNEP-WCMC's Principal Scientist and Head of Science Samantha Hill, in collaboration with Senior Programme Officer Sebastian Dunnett. Their contributions to the report focus on the integral role of biodiversity in all parts of the nexus, and the inclusion of a variety of stakeholders in solution-making, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities. 

The more than 70 response options presented in the report, taken together, support the achievement of all 17 SDGs, all 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the long-term goals for climate change mitigation and adaptation of the Paris Agreement. Twenty-four of the response options advance more than five SDGs and over five of the Global Biodiversity Framework targets. 

Implementing response options together or in sequence can further improve their positive impacts and achieve cost savings. Ensuring inclusive participation, such as including Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the co-design, governance and implementation of response options, can also increase the benefits and equity of these measures. 

Nexus governance approaches and action 

The report offers a series of eight steps to help policymakers, communities, civil society and other stakeholders identify problems and shared values in order to work together towards solutions for just and sustainable futures – presented as a graphical road map for nexus action. 

Speaking about the immediate relevance and value of the report, Dr David Obura, Chair of IPBES, said:

“The past two months have seen three separate major global negotiations – COP16 of both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification, as well as COP29 of the climate Convention. Together with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDGs, it is clear that the Governments of the world are working harder than ever before to address the global challenges – grounded in the environmental crises – that confront us all. The Nexus Report helps to better inform all of these actions, policies and decisions, particularly in addressing their interlinkages, and the greater benefits achieved by devising integrated solutions at all scales. I would like to thank and congratulate the co-chairs, authors and everyone who has contributed to this tremendously complex and important assessment process.” 

With the approval of the Nexus Report by the IPBES Plenary, the most important next step is that its findings are used across government and with other stakeholders at all levels. 

Main image: photo by Kiara Worth, IISD/ENB