2024-12-17 13:00:00
This is one example among the many very close ties that exist between environmental, health, social and economic crises. In some counties in the United States, a disease caused by a fungus has caused the massive collapse of insectivorous bat populations since 2006. These play a role in regulating predators; in their absence, agricultural production and income decline and insecticide use increases rapidly. The increased use of plant protection products, in turn, leads to a significant increase in infant mortality. A study, published in September in the journal Sciencedescribes these phenomena precisely.
These relationships between the different threats facing the planet are at the heart of the new assessment of the Intergovernmental Scientific and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the “IPCC of biodiversity”. The result of the work of 165 experts from 57 countries mobilized over three years, it analyzes the links between biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change – the five elements of what IPBES calls the “nexus” – and offers options for jointly responding to these different topics, so far too often treated separately. Its sixty-page “summary for decision makers”, published on Tuesday 17 December and containing a series of key messages, was approved by representatives of 147 States during a plenary meeting in Windhoek, Namibia.
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