久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
Opinion
Home / Opinion / Global Views

Holistic healing

By ZHU LI,NIU HONGWEI and TERRY TOWNSHEND | China Daily | Updated: 2022-07-11 08:04
Share
Share - WeChat
SHI YU/CHINA DAILY

Financing needed for biodiversity and ecological protection as well as climate-related projects

A Chinese saying best sums up half measures and haphazard actions: "Treat the head when the head aches, and treat the foot when the foot hurts." Treating human bodies holistically is more effective in restoring a patient's health. Similarly, our planet, now threatened by climate change and biodiversity loss, also needs healing in a holistic way.

We are beginning to realize the intertwined nature between climate and biodiversity. Climate change aggravates biodiversity loss and weakens nature's capacity to absorb carbon, further hastening climate change. To break this vicious cycle requires addressing these two challenges simultaneously and with equal vigor.

Although there is growing consensus on this among scientists, policymakers, and financiers, globally financing for climate and biodiversity remains lopsided. Global climate financing reached $632 billion in 2019/2020, while biodiversity financing totaled just $124-$143 billion.

This contrast also exists in the deployment of green finance, where financing for climate efforts dwarfs that for biodiversity. According to the International Development Finance Club, of a total of $185 billion green finance commitments its members made in 2020,$179 billion or 96 percent went to climate finance, and only a meager $5.4 billion or 3 percent to biodiversity.

It is the same with green bonds issued in China. According to the China Green Bond Market Report 2020, of the $44 billion green bonds issued by Chinese entities in 2020, only about 5 percent were allotted for biodiversity or ecological protection, with the rest largely going to climate-related projects.

Many reasons drive this imbalance. In the climate space, greenhouse gas emissions can be credibly converted to CO2 equivalents, now a common currency to measure the contribution to climate change. This makes designing, financing, and monitoring climate-focused projects feasible. In contrast, quantifying ecosystem services and biodiversity (in either biophysical or monetary terms) is fiendishly difficult. Inevitably, this impedes investments that rely on quantifiable results.

Thanks to regulation to internalize the cost of carbon emissions, climate-focused projects (e.g., renewable energy development and energy efficiency) already have proven cash flows and attract sizable private investment. On the other hand, biodiversity still struggles to convert its benefits to human societies into financial revenue. Except for sustainable forestry, eco-tourism, mitigation banking, and a handful of other examples, "bankable" biodiversity projects are generally few and far between. This explains why most financing for biodiversity still comes from public sources.

Finally, biodiversity is often uniquely local, and projects designed for one place are therefore rarely directly replicable or scalable in other places. For their generally modest size and disparate nature, biodiversity projects don't conveniently fit the parameters of existing financial products and markets that favor standardization and economies of scale. So, biodiversity projects have a long way to go to take full advantage of modern financial markets' efficiency, reach and vast resources.

Nevertheless, ways to channel more financing into biodiversity conservation and bring about better alignment between climate and biodiversity do exist. To begin with, efforts to address climate and biodiversity must not undercut each other. For example, the land footprint of some clean energy infrastructure can be up to 12 times that of traditional energy sources, so where we place it is crucial. Without careful planning, well-intentioned clean energy infrastructure could endanger biodiversity and create additional financial burdens to restore impaired biodiversity.

We must step up efforts to explore the benefits of tackling both climate and biodiversity challenges with nature-based solutions. For example, restoring mangrove forests can deliver multiple benefits, from enhancing fish nurseries to storing carbon to mitigating the impacts of storm surges.

Encouragingly, China is jump-starting this effort by launching its National Mangrove Conservation and Restoration Action Plan, an initiative informed in part by a strategic study completed by the Paulson Institute and its partners. Under this plan, a total of 18,800 hectares of mangrove forests will be rehabilitated and planted by 2025.

In addition, China's national carbon emission trading system inaugurated in July 2021, and its planned expansion to cover eight high-emission sectors, has immense potential for scaling up nature-based solutions as it is expected to allow carbon credits generated from ecosystem-based projects to offset carbon emissions. Moreover, experts are also calling for the introduction of emissions allowance auctioning and allotment of a portion of the proceeds to ecosystem protection and restoration, which will help boost financing for biodiversity.

Seeking innovative ways to bridge the gap between biodiversity projects and existing financial markets is also imperative. For example, by combining replicable homogenous projects or bundling multiple heterogeneous projects into one diversified product, conservation projects may be structured into more marketable financial products, thus unlocking the vast financial resources that are increasingly looking for environmental, social and governance-themed investment opportunities. An example of this is the mangrove bonds that are gaining interest among financial institutions in and outside China.

Last but not least, exploring innovative mechanisms that help realize the economic value of ecosystem services by either leveraging existing markets or creating new ones must continue. For example, the New York Stock Exchange is exploring a new nature-based asset class in the form of Natural Asset Companies designed to capture and store nature's intrinsic and productive value.

Of course, for biodiversity finance to grow at scale, many other challenges must be addressed, such as strengthening the regulatory framework to value natural capital, building capacity, and implementing de-risking measures to incentivize private investment. In addition, reforming subsidies harmful to climate and biodiversity in the energy, agriculture, and fishery sectors and eliminating deforestation from soft commodity supply chains are essential to achieving climate and biodiversity goals more broadly.

Fundamentally, the climate and biodiversity crises are consequences of our current economic systems' failure to sufficiently value nature in all economic activities. To remedy this, we must transform our economies to recognize our natural capital's finite resources and services.

Healing our planet will take time and requires a holistic approach. Green finance and nature-based solutions already demonstrate their potential in achieving both climate and biodiversity goals, so we must speed up and scale up our actions. "Time and tide wait for no man "never rings truer than today.

Zhu Li is director of the conservation program at the Paulson Institute. Niu Hongwei is the chief conservation officer with the institute. Terry Townshend is an adviser to the institute.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
主站蜘蛛池模板: 免费欧美在线视频 | 免费精品国产日韩热久久 | 国产www| 亚洲女人被黑人猛躁进女人 | 99国产精品视频免费观看 | 国产真实自拍 | 亚洲成人91 | 亚洲视频在线网 | 国产福利在线91 | 精品国产欧美一区二区 | 欧美成人三级大全 | 日韩欧美一区二区不卡看片 | 天堂入口 | 亚洲悠悠色综合中文字幕 | 成人午夜在线播放 | 杨幂丝袜国产福利视频 | a级国产乱理伦片在线观看 a级国产乱理伦片在线观看99 | 精品综合久久久久久蜜月 | 欧美精品人爱a欧美精品 | 成年人免费看视频 | 成人网免费看 | 精品久久久久久久久久久久久久久 | 亚洲狠狠综合久久 | 日韩99| 亚州中文| 欧美一级片在线免费观看 | 国产一区二区久久 | 99国产精品高清一区二区二区 | 欧美成人手机在线 | 欧美午夜免费毛片a级 | 国产精品6 | 99爱免费观看视频在线 | 一级毛片真人不卡免费播 | 亚洲精品99久久一区二区三区 | 岛国搬运工最新网地址 | 免费看一片 | 亚洲欧美在线看 | 看全色黄大色黄大片女图片 | 一级女毛片 | 国产一区二区三区在线免费观看 | 欧美特级毛片aaaa |