MA reports on Desertification and Business are released

The two reports are the third and fourth in a series of seven synthesis reports and four technical volumes produced by MA that assess the state of global ecosystems and their impact on human well-being. MA is a four-year assessments designed by a partnership of UN agencies, international scientific organizations, and development agencies, with guidance from the private sector and civil society groups. It involves 1,360 of the world's leading experts, from 95 different countries. You can read more about MA here.

The desertification Synthesis Report is the third Synthesis report from the MA. Drylands occupy 41% of Earth's land area and are home to more than 2 billion people; of these around 1-6% live in desertified areas and many more are under threat from further desertification. If unchecked, desertification and degradation of ecosystem services in drylands will threaten future improvements in human well-being and possibly reverse gains in some regions. Effectively dealing with desertification will lead to a reduction in global poverty.

Desertification is a result of a long-term failure to balance demand for and supply of ecosystem services in drylands. The phenomenon is embedded in a global chain of causality and that its impact is felt far beyond the boundaries of affected areas; affected areas may sometimes be located thousands of kilometres away from the desertified areas. Dust storms, downstream flooding, impairment of global carbon sequestration capacity, and regional and global climate change follows desertification. Desertification also causes human migration and economic refugees, leading to deepening poverty and political instability.

Desertification contributes significantly to climate change and biodiversity loss. Desertification is also affected by climate change; the projected intensification of freshwater scarcity as a result of climate change will cause greater stresses in drylands.

The relief of pressures on drylands is strongly correlated with poverty reduction:

. Increased integration of land and water man­agement is a key method for desertification prevention. Local communities play a central role in the adoption and success of effective land and water management policies. Institutional and technological capacity, access to markets, and financial capital is however needed.
. Increased integration of pastoral and agricultural land uses can be an environmentally sustainable way to avoid desertification; but replacing pastoralism with sedentary cultivation in rangelands can also contribute to desertification.
. Solar energy, attractive landscapes, and large wilderness areas: Introducing alternative livelihoods that benefit from the unique advantages of drylands without increasing the pressure on them can be done by for example using the round-the-year available solar energy, attractive landscapes, and large wilderness areas.
. Creation of economic opportunities in urban centres and areas out­side drylands is yet another way of dryland pressure relief

On the whole, combating desertification yields multiple local and global benefits and helps mitigate biodiversity loss and human-induced global climate change. Environmental manage­ment approaches for combating desertification, mitigating cli­mate change, and conserving biodiversity are interlinked in many ways. Therefore, joint implementation of major environmental conventions can lead to increased synergy and effectiveness, benefiting dryland people.

The fourth MA report "Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Industry" acknowledges that while there has been a decoupling of economic growth from consumption of ecosystem services, the already unsustainable consumption of ecosystem services will continue to grow even when population grow is expected to level off by mid-century.

Six major changes that we see to day will have great negative impact on ecosystems, and will also affect business and industry:

. water scarcity,
. climate change,
. habitat change,
. biodiversity loss and invasive species,
. overexploitation of oceans and
. nutrient overloading.

Ecosystem services that are freely available today will become more costly and ecosystem change will also affect consumer preferences, stockholder expectations, employee wellbeing and availability of finance and insurance. But changing conditions will also lead to that new business opportunities will emerge. Among the new business opportunities that the MA mentions are markets for carbon reduction credits, low-input systems such as organic farming and ecotourism.

The MA also points at the importance that new technologies can play in developing systems that can enhance the availability of ecosystem service, or reduce the pressure on ecosystems. Two examples are maximizing freshwater provisions through e.g. the development of efficient and cost effective desalination technology; and by new technical developments to reduce green house emissions. At the same time the importance of being reasonable about new technologies is highlighted. Technology innovation is a difficult and expensive process and a solution in one social, economic, cultural and policy context will not automatically show the same effect elsewhere.

In the light of that business will have to adapt to the increasing ecosystem degradation, investment today can be valuable for enabling companies' to prevent future higher costs and operating constraints. It can also be a way to increase future competitiveness. Some leading companies are taking steps to reduce ecosystem impact beyond government regulations (and sometimes even ahead of customer demand). This enables those companies to shape future markets and policy environments and therefore to be a step ahead at a later stage when the stricter regulations will be enforced to reduce ecosystem change. Several multilateral companies have subscribed to the Global Compact Principles that the UN launched in 1999. These companies have committed themselves to adopt policies of environmental and social responsibility, and take precautionary measures regarding environmental issues. There is also a growing use of external certification programmes for social and environmental responsibility. A strong drive to do this is that social and environmental responsibility is becoming a more important role for companies' reputation.