Yerevan - Perhaps the Kunming-Montreal Global Agreement on Biodiversity should have been called the ‘Agreement on Food Security and Nature’s Services to the Economy’. Brutal and Calvinistic, admittedly, but ontologically correct. Such a title might also have attracted greater media attention to these neglected negotiations. Never before has a nature COP devoted such extensive discussion to the interdependencies between ecosystem degradation and species extinction: growing risks to food security on a large scale; mounting threats to water availability; dangers to business continuity (that is, the ability to keep all economic sectors functioning and operational); financial and insurance-sector exposure; and risks to political and social stability. Last but not least, there is the massive loss of jobs. The NGO Global Canopy sounded the alarm over this last issue at COP17, the biodiversity conference currently taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, until 30 October.

According to data from Global Canopy’s ENCORE Insights: Country Dashboard, the loss of natural habitats could put 140 million jobs at risk across the EU, the UK and Switzerland, as the agri-food, export, energy, manufacturing, chemical and pharmaceutical sectors face potential disruption. Biodiversity loss at both national and international levels could also adversely affect living standards across the EU, reducing the availability and affordability of goods and services worth €8.2 trillion each year. This represents approximately half of total consumption across the 28 EU Member States and Switzerland.

Many production and commercial processes, as well as buildings, depend on nature to function. Nature loss can disrupt these processes and undermine the structures, forcing employers to take adaptive measures that could have repercussions for their employees.

In France alone, 16.3 million jobs could be lost, while Italy could see its GDP fall by more than €1 trillion in the long term – a loss that could have devastating consequences for the country’s economy. In the export sector, goods worth as much as €3.5 trillion annually, including both imports and exports, are at risk due to ecosystem degradation.

These are, of course, absolute figures that could materialise only in the event of widespread, systemic biodiversity loss on a global scale. According to Claudia Gray, Director of Nature-Related Finance at Global Canopy, “the figure highlights the enormous number of jobs that could be at risk, given the heavy dependence of national economies on the infrastructure provided by nature”. This is a hypothetical scenario, but it illustrates how every loss of natural habitat, every species extinction and every degraded ecosystem can collectively have a detrimental impact on the economy.

Also read: COP17 seeks consensus on nature finance and tackling environmentally harmful subsidies

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