While the world’s attention has been on the US election, the rising number of extreme weather events — from disastrous flooding in Spain to southern Africa’s worst drought in a century — highlights the need to remain focused on climate change, biodiversity loss and a changing water cycle.
These crises are related and the symptoms are getting worse. When drought kills crops, millions of people suffer; and when water extremes (too much or too little) hit vulnerable societies, the resulting displacements, migration and conflicts can affect everyone.
Yet no one is listening. The recent COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, received little international attention and failed to produce a roadmap to ramp up funding for species protection. Instead, delegates merely celebrated their decision to charge private companies for the use of genetic biodiversity information and to establish a new working group for indigenous peoples.
While important, these developments are marginal in relation to the task of halting biodiversity loss. Worse, they could serve as a smokescreen for global inaction, just as we have seen over the years in global climate negotiations, where long sessions on trade and “loss and damage” obscured the lack of action on phasing out fossil fuels. Although the Global Biodiversity Framework — adopted in Montreal in 2022 — established ambitious targets to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030, 158 countries still have not submitted formal plans on how they will play their part.
This inaction cannot continue. Human activities are threatening the stability of the climate and the natural systems upon which human well-being depends. Food security, human health and social stability are all on the line. The COP16 negotiations are supposed to continue “at a later date” — but the world cannot afford to let COP16 pass without significant progress toward protecting our planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems.
Without urgent, systemic, collective action, the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and the water crisis will only intensify. Biodiversity and nature are central to maintaining stable climate patterns and the hydrological cycle. Wetlands and forests, which store huge amounts of carbon, rely on stable water cycles and thriving biodiversity to function effectively.
Similarly, terrestrial ecosystems currently absorb 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, helping to prevent atmospheric levels from rising beyond 420 parts per million. Yet extreme hydrological events — droughts and floods, combined with heat during the 2023 “super El Nino” cycle — eroded this massive carbon sink substantially. This was a serious warning sign. Unchecked biodiversity loss alone could cause us to exceed the Paris Climate Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities worldwide.
In our final report for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, we show how interconnected our world is not just through the blue water in our rivers and lakes, but also through “green water” in soil moisture. Moreover, we are all connected through “atmospheric rivers” — moisture transported from the soil, through plants and forests, to the atmosphere, where it flows between regions to provide essential rainfall.
Source and image credit: https://bit.ly/4hWr7bF
