Protected Areas (Global Biome Weight), and Marine Protected Areas - in the biodiversity and habitat issue area. Since the Nagoya Protocol, biodiversity has continued to gain attention in international conservation and development arenas.
The UN designated 2011 to 2020 as the Decade of Biodiversity, indicating the increasing concern within the global community.104 The 2014 EPI shows global progress in terms of the increase of terrestrial and marine protected areas, largely due to national efforts to meet targets set through the CBD. Other analyses, such as the UN MDGs Report,105 similarly show modest improvements in reducing the rate of loss of some species. With the realization that ecological wealth can translate into economic health, policymakers and business leaders worldwide have begun to understand the value of protecting ecosystems and biodiversity. The CBD reports that 45 percent of business leaders in Africa, 53 percent in Latin America, 34 percent in Europe consider biodiversity loss to be a threat to economic growth.106 The same report estimates that the cost of inaction
on biodiversity will amount to US$2.0 to US$4.5 trillion per year over the next 50 and leaders are more frequently taking ecosystem services into account when calculating their nations’ assets. In February 2012, the UN developed the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, making it possible for countries to include “natural capital” in their accounting to support sustainable development.107 Twenty-four countries are already using natural capital accounting.108 natural capital and the heightened awareness of its value should aid countries in taking action to protect biodiversity. Despite these signs of progress, much remains to be done to reduce global rates of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. The MDGs 2012 Report shows that even with increased protected areas, biodiversity is still being lost and key sites remain unprotected. UNEPWCMC’s Protected Planet 2012 Report reveals that only 33 percent of terrestrial ecoregions, 13 percent of marine ecoregions, and 22 percent of AZE sites reach target levels of protection.109 Importantly, these targets only measure the area under legal protection, but this does not necessarily translate into effective conservation of biodiversity or prevention of species loss.
104
United Nations Resolution 65/161. (2011). Convention on biological diversity. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 11 March 2011. Available: http://www.cbd.int/undb/goals/undb-unresolution.pdf. Last accessed: January 11, 2014. 105 United Nations. (2012) The millennium development goals report 2012. New York, New York. Available: http://www. 106
Convention on Biological Diversity. Biodiversity for Development and Eradication of Poverty. Available: https://www. cbd.int/undb/media/factsheets/undb-factsheet-development-en.pdf. Last accessed: January 11, 2014. 107 United Nations. System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. Available: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/ envaccounting/seea.asp. Last accessed: January 11, 2014. 108 The World Bank. (2012) Moving beyond GDP: how to factor natural capital into economic decision making.
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137 2014 EPI
Last accessed: January 11, 2014. Bertzky, B., Corrigan, C., Kemsey, J., et al. (2012) Protected planet report 2012: tracking progress towards global targets for protected areas en.pdf. Last accessed: January 11, 2014.