Unep urges firms to partner with States to restore nature

Business companies globally have been challenged to double their contributions towards addressing the effects of climate change by partnering with governments, experts and organisations championing the restoration of nature through the mitigation of climate change

United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) Deputy Executive Director Elizabeth Mrema said that as per the World Economic Forum statistics, 50 per cent of the global economy valued at four trillion dollars depends on nature.

By 2030, Mrema said, nature will provide over 350 million jobs thus there is no room for plundering any more natural resources on land and water bodies.

“Something has to be done, but it is like a drop in the ocean. A lot is already happening but it is not enough as long as the statistics continue to convey negative news. Businesses can no longer focus on profits alone at the expense of nature. If they will not protect nature, they will collapse,” she explained.

She recounted how during the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) held in December 2022 in Canada businesses, financial institutions and the private sector were up in arms as they negotiated a global biodiversity framework with governments to make it mandatory for businesses and other corporate bodies to assess and manage their risks, impacts, dependencies and opportunities arising from climate change.

Later in September 2023 the private sector also came up with the task force on nature-related financial disclosure which contains recommendations on how financial institutions can assess the risks.

As of January this year over 320 companies had already voluntarily adopted the recommendations.
Additionally, Mrema who spoke during the Special session of the UN Science-Policy Business Forum on the Environment in the ongoing Sixth Session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) said the occurrence of natural disasters points to a deeper challenge beyond climate change where the world has directed all its attention.

According the environmentalists, the primary drivers of biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, over over-exploitation of natural resources are caused by human-made disasters such that nature is being exploited to the extent that it can no longer sustain itself.

She expressed her concern about how millions of marine species have become extinct, 66 per cent of the marine environment, 85 per cent of the wetlands and 75 per cent of the land degraded due to pollution.

“We can do everything under the sun to deal with climate change but if we do not look into that ecosystem we will not get anywhere. We need to ask ourselves, is climate change the root cause of floods? We need to go back to the basics and look at the root cause not the surface cause,” she stated calling on the stakeholders to pay attention to the three planetary crises; climate change, biodiversity laws and pollution.

She added: “We need to have peace with nature because, in the absence of it, we will continue to see more floods, droughts, heatwaves and earthquakes. And we will all say it is climate change. We need to ask ourselves, where are these phenomena happening, are they occurring in the air, are they happening on the ecosystem of the earth we are sitting on? These crises need not be looked at as a silo of three pillars but in an integrated fashion and come up with nature-based solutions.”