“At least $1.8 trillion” in public subsidies – 2% of global GDP – are annually responsible for destruction of ecosystems and extinction of speciesaccording to a study published on Thursday by companies and NGOs that ask for better targeting of aid.
The results were published by “B Team”, an organization co-founded by Richard Branson, CEO of the Virgin Group, which brings together business leaders and international foundations, and by “Business for Nature”, a global coalition of companies and NGOs.
“The fossil fuel, agriculture and water sectors receive more than 80% of all environmentally harmful subsidies”, these organizations point out in a statement, in which they ask governments to “reorient, convert or eliminate” them by 2030.
Among the subsidies mentioned are those for cattle ranching and soybean production in Brazil, due to their role in deforestation, and subsidies for biofuels in Europe, which encourage the expansion of arable land to the detriment of biodiversity.
Public aid for irrigation in the area of Palo Verde, in California, accused of encourage droughtas well as subsidies, especially in Iran, for electricity or fuel to power water pumps that deplete the water table too fast.
The study puts at 640,000 million dollars a year the amount of money that receives the fossil fuel sectorwhich contributes to water and air pollution and soil subsidence.
For their part, subsidies to agriculture represent some 520,000 million dollars, and are linked to problems of soil erosion, water pollution and deforestation. According to the authors, 155,000 million a year promote unsustainable forest management.
“Nature is decaying at an alarming rateand we have never lived on a planet with so little biodiversity,” says Costa Rican Christiana Figueres, former Secretary General of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and member of Team B.
But the study also notes that better targeting of subsidies could help halt and even reverse these natural losses by 2030, while benefiting business, as “more than half of world GDP (…) depends on nature” to varying degrees.
This call comes just a few weeks before the next session of COP15, the UN convention on biodiversity, which was due to be held in January in Geneva but was postponed due to the omicron variant of the coronavirus and will now be held from 13 to March 29.
But nevertheless “any reform of subsidies must take into account the social and environmental impact, to prevent it from affecting the poorest households and the most vulnerable communities around the world”, underline B Team and Business for Nature. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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