The IPBES report sees climate, nature and food challenges as interconnected.

A major report warns that climate change, nature loss and food insecurity are all interconnected and cannot be tackled as separate problems.

A review of the scientific evidence by Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Governments are minimizing or ignoring the links between five key areas – biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.

This “silved” approach has unintended consequences, such as harming biodiversity through tree-planting schemes, or polluting rivers while increasing food production, the report says.

The latest review was approved at a meeting of nearly 150 countries in Windhoek, Namibia.

The report’s co-chair, Paula Harrison, professor of land and water modeling at the UK’s Center for Ecology and Hydrology, said understanding the interdependencies between different regions was “crucial” to tackling crises affecting the natural world.

“Our current governance systems are often disparate departments, they’re working in silos, they’re very fragmented,” he said.

“Often these connections are not recognized or even ignored and that means you can have unintended consequences or commercial losses that arise because people just weren’t thinking in a holistic way.”

He said the report identified more than 70 solutions to address the overall problem, many of which were low-cost.

Examples cited in the report include a disease called bilharzia, which causes long-term health problems for more than 200 million people worldwide, particularly in Africa.

Treating the problem as a health problem with medication causes people to become infected again.

A different approach in rural Senegal dealt with water pollution and invasive plants that are habitats for snails that host parasitic insects that bring disease, resulting in increased health and biodiversity.

The report also found:

• More than half of the world’s population – especially in developing countries – lives in areas most affected by the loss of biodiversity, water and food.
• Biodiversity – the richness and diversity of all life on Earth – is declining everywhere, largely as a result of human actions, with “direct and serious impacts” on food security and nutrition, water, health and well-being, and climate change. Falling on flexibility for
• Delaying the action required to meet policy goals will also increase the costs of their delivery. For example, delayed action on biodiversity targets can double the final costs – while increasing the chances of species becoming extinct.

The report also considered future challenges and scenarios, focusing on the periods up to 2050 and 2100.

It found that under current “business as usual” trends, the consequences for biodiversity, water quality and human health would be dire.

Addressing only one area in isolation will likely lead to negative consequences in other areas. Focusing only on climate change, for example, can have negative consequences for areas such as biodiversity and food, reflecting competition for land.

“There are future scenarios that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co-benefits across elements of the nexus,” Professor Harrison said.

“Future scenarios with the broadest synergistic benefits are those that focus on sustainable production and consumption combined with protecting and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change,” he said. Focus.”