{"id":31328,"date":"2022-07-15T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T04:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=31328"},"modified":"2022-07-14T19:18:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T23:18:57","slug":"un-short-term-economic-gains-harming-well-being-and-integrity-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2022\/07\/un-short-term-economic-gains-harming-well-being-and-integrity-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"UN: Short-Term Economic Gains Harming Well-Being and Integrity of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

(Beyond Pesticides, July 15, 2022)\u00a0Nature is too often sacrificed to a global and outsized focus on short-term profits and economic growth, according to a new report<\/a> by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services<\/a> (IPBES<\/a>). The report warns that policy making, broadly, does not reflect the value of Nature\u2019s roles in supporting human life and activity, never mind all the peripheral benefits (aesthetic, emotional, spiritual) people derive from the natural world. The report<\/a> calls on leaders in all sectors to integrate the contributions of Nature in development and deployment of policy in a more-comprehensive way \u2014 as Le Monde<\/em><\/a> writes, \u201cbeyond being \u2018a huge factory.\u2019\u201d Beyond Pesticides offers a seminal reminder from Fred Kirschenmann<\/a>, PhD: the prevailing philosophy of maximum efficient production for short-term economic return at the expense of Nature causes havoc in the world and will not work in the future; instead, we must develop a broad ecological conscience that guides all that we do.<\/p>\r\n

The report\u2019s Summary for Policymakers was approved<\/a> on July 11 by representatives from 139 Member States; the report itself is the culmination of four years of effort by 82 collaborating scientists and experts from multiple disciplines. The same member representative approved an additional IPBES report<\/a> that urges the member governments to sustainably manage the wild plant and animal species on which the world’s populations depend for their survival.<\/p>\r\n

IPBES co-chairs Patricia Balvanera, Brigitte Baptiste, Mike Christie, and Unai Pascual noted, according to the UN\u2019s press release<\/a>, that examples of \u201cembedd[ing] [N]ature into policymaking are \u2018in short supply.\u2019\u201d The press release asserts that, although \u201ceconomic and political decisions have predominantly prioritized market-based values of nature . . . they do not adequately reflect how changes in the natural world affect people\u2019s quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

As Le Monde<\/em><\/a> reports, for example, re: the biodiversity crisis<\/a>: \u201cAccording to IPBES, the value that is predominantly attributed to biodiversity, its market value, does not reflect the value of its contribution to humanity. And furthermore, doing so does not allow us to face the huge challenge of the loss of biodiversity. With their limited vision of what nature gives us, the political and economic decisions being made today are, on the contrary, \u2018a key factor\u2019 in the origin of the crisis.\u201d An IPBES webpage<\/a> leads with this headline about the values assessment: \u201cDecisions Based on Narrow Set of Market Values of Nature Underpin the Global Biodiversity Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Looking to history to explain some of this situation, we find that a combination of factors is likely at work, not least of which is the Industrial Revolution and its massive impacts \u2014 made possible by the extraction and burning of (finite) fossil fuels. Reaching farther back in time, we recall the Enlightenment (and biblical) notions that humans are somehow separate from, and destined to dominate and subdue, Nature. Dr. Kirschenmann argues<\/a> that these led to people focusing dominantly on humans and their enterprises, and \u2014 detrimentally \u2014 less and less during the past half millennium on the natural world and its welfare.<\/p>\r\n

From that paradigm \u2014 and fertilized by cheap energy, the rising power of corporations during the past 100 years, and their influence on government \u2014 have flowed particular approaches to human activity, including specialization, a focus on productivity, and the neurochemical and economic \u201cfeel-goods\u201d of short-term profit. Those approaches are easily recognized in what they have wrought \u2014 most of the woes and crises of modernity, including:<\/p>\r\n