Global governments and the private sector must prioritise the health of nature in all decision-making to avoid catastrophic consequences for the planet.
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We are all responsible for the future, but governments and the private sector are fundamental to enabling the transformative and systemic changes required to protect and restore nature and eliminate the causes of biodiversity collapse.
Nature protection and restoration needs to be the cornerstone of our economies and societies. Now is the time to introduce nature-positive methods of economic development that deliver prosperity to all citizens, which must include the elimination of perverse and harmful subsidies. By incorporating the full value of natural resources into decision-making, leaders can drive sustainable economic prosperity, while ensuring diversity and abundance in nature.
The current global pandemic highlights the tremendous economic, social and environmental risks governments and companies take by not protecting nature and by not considering the interdependencies – and consequences – of their decisions and policies on nature, climate and health.
Recovery from the global pandemic must be positive for nature, including deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions – ultimately to zero for all anthropogenic emissions – with companies and countries transitioning to become nature-positive and carbon neutral.
FFI’s work to promote nature-positive decision-making at government and industry level spans almost a century. We’ve helped broker transboundary nature protection agreements between Liberia and Guinea, China and Vietnam, and Rwanda, DRC and Uganda. We’ve secured a UK microbeads ban, preventing harmful plastics related to cosmetic products from entering the ocean – and we’ve led the way in calling for an urgent, global moratorium on deep-sea mining. Last September we launched Our One Home, calling on the UN and governments around the world to increase by $500bn the funding for conservation and the natural world. Now we’re calling on global governments to make the protection and restoration of nature the cornerstone of our economies and societies.
Hans Klingel
From boardrooms to government, adopting a nature-positive approach to decision-making means board members, government ministers and policymakers aligning around shared goals to protect and restore nature and eliminate the causes of biodiversity collapse. Commitments must now become actions.
Commit to and track time-bound targets for achieving nature and climate goals, enabling full accountability of commitments against measurable, transparent milestones, encouraging greater scrutiny and civil society engagement.
Review and reform domestic policies in all sectors and all levels of government, notably those of trade, energy, agriculture, water and transport, as well as those for foreign direct investment, to ensure they do not conflict with or contradict the nature and climate goals set by governments at all levels, and companies. These reforms must then be incorporated into trade agreements, bilateral and multilateral, to ensure they do not create loopholes, or contradict those domestic policies.
Create mechanisms at the international level that ensure full accountability, learning from the creation of previous international mechanisms and bodies that are empowered to pursue justice and compel accountability, such as the International Criminal Court.
Integrate a nature-positive agenda and policies throughout supply chains and then deliver nature-positive outcomes aligned with those policies
Adopt policies and practices that minimise resource use and the attendant environmental impacts
Ensure that meaningful nature metrics are integrated alongside climate metrics in measures of ‘Environmental’ in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles and standards
Governments and the private sector must actively prioritise and be fully accountable for all decisions that affect nature
Divert funding from harmful activities and into the protection and recovery of nature
Reform decision-making structures to empower local people on the conservation front line
Halt the destruction of the natural world to reduce threats to climate stability and human health
Provide and ensure wide access to new technological tools that help address the biggest threats to nature
Ask the UN to commit to $500bn a year for nature.
FFI works on over 140 projects around the world protecting threatened species and habitats. Donate to support our vital conservation work on the ground.
The Five Breakthroughs for Nature are fundamental for a healthy planet. Share the solutions for a more prosperous natural world.
FFI’s scientists and staff are pioneering the latest conservation methods around the world to target the biggest threats to nature. Contact our specialists for further advice and information on the Five Breakthroughs.
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Our one home
Humanity faces an uncertain future, but these Five Breakthroughs for Nature represent our best chances of protecting and restoring the ecosystems on which we all depend, reversing the loss of the biodiversity that is fundamental to life on Earth, and avoiding catastrophic climate change.
