Toward a Nature-Based Economy

Abstract

Humanity faces a dual threat to its existence: climate change and biodiversity loss. The two risks are linked through human activity and an economic system that promotes growth at the expense of nature. Creating a nature-based economy can mitigate the dual risks and bring sustained, shared prosperity. The article shows how markets can be developed around the protection and regeneration of nature. Policies and actions needed to unleash the resources and innovation of markets to ensure that nature-based economic growth is shared and sustainable are specified. A nature-based economy ensures that conservation is a source of capital for development.

Going beyond market-based mechanisms to finance nature-based solutions and foster sustainable futures

“…For example, recent research suggests a forest carbon offset in Panama provided financial stability to poorer participants to diversify income sources, although income inequality, overall, remained unchanged [75]. However, the uncritical assumption that 'market-forces' will generate shared prosperity, such as promulgated by Chami et al (2022) [41], overlooks the challenge of ensuring distributional equity (i.e., how benefits and costs are distributed) and procedural equity (i.e., equity in decision-making) [76] particularly where there are strong pressures to generate returns on investment for investors. For example, in the context of urban NbS, co-funding by private actors has been found to lead to a bias in NbS towards more affluent areas, because NbS (such as city parks) will be more successful at realizing revenue streams in these areas [25,29].…”

“…Despite the emphasis on the importance of IPLCs as effective stewards of lands and biodiversity, and increasing emphasis on the need for indigenous-led solutions [113,114], IPLCs are often portrayed as 'partners' for or passive 'beneficiaries' of environmental policy decisions within global policy discourses, including for NbS [22]. For example, Chami et al (2022) portray IPLCs as mere subjects 'to be employed' or 'partners' to deliver their vision of a nature-based economy [41]. In turn, this reinforces power asymmetries between IPLCs and external actors.…”

“…There has been a particularly strong push by the private sector and multilateral bodies to attract private capital flows for NbS (e.g., [23,40]), including through blended finance schemes whereby public grant funding is used to stimulate finance from private and institutional financiers by mitigating investment risks [35]. Calls for a global scaling-up of natural capital markets as the main mechanism to address climate change and ecological breakdown have also been made (e.g., [41]). Such mechanisms are closely intertwined with, and dependent upon, innovations like natural capital accounting to create tradable financial asset classes from biodiversity and ecosystem services.…”

Living in relationship with the Ocean to transform governance in the UN Ocean Decade

“…Ocean-centered governance seeks to create new legal mechanisms that act as a catalyst for humanity to rethink our role as an inherent part of the Oceanic system, recognize the Ocean as “an entity that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts,” and become responsive to and understands the functioning of the Ocean and “the entire community of life it hosts” and supports [ 47 – 50 ]. Therefore, an Ocean-centered approach also places human and economic activity within the natural capacity of the Ocean and adopts an integrated, holistic, systems, and life cycle approach [ 51 ].…”

“…The persisting “heavily privatised, zoned, and securitised Ocean undermines the human-Ocean relationship” and has led to a focus on rights to exploit over responsibilities to protect and preserve [ 40 , 90 ]. In order for the Ocean to continue to support life, “a new relationship between humanity and the Ocean is required” [ 8 , 39 , 40 , 51 ].…”