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Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss

Pamela McElwee, Esther Turnout, Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, Jennifer Clapp, Cindy Isenhour, Tim Jackson, Eszter Kelemen, Daniel C. Miller, Graciela Rusch, Joachim H. Spangenberg, Anthony Waldron, Rupert J. Baumgartner, Brent Bleys, Michael W. Howard, Eric Mungatana, Hien Ngo, Irene Ring, and Rui Santos
One Earth, Vol 3 | October 2020

CC.0 :: Nick Page / unsplash.com

Summary

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. 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 toward 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.
Figure 1 | Economic Drivers of Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Change
OPEN ACCESS

The article is available in open access via the One Earth Journal website. If you have difficulties accessing the paper, please get in touch: info@cusp.ac.uk.

Citation

McElwee P, Turnout E, Chiroleu-Assouline M, Clapp J, Isenhour C, Jackson T, Kelemen E, Miller D C, Rusch G, Spangenberg J H, Waldron A, Baumgartner R J, Bleys B, Howard M W, Mungatana E, Ngo H, Ring I and R Santos 2020. Ensuring a Post-COVID Economic Agenda Tackles Global Biodiversity Loss. In: One Earth, 3(4). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.011.

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