ECO

“Nature-based solutions” (NbS) is a contested term. Academics write long peer-reviewed articles laying out criteria by which so-called NbS might be evaluated, whilst oil majors create new “nature-based solutions” business units unaligned with the basic elements of the definitional criteria being set out by the academics. At the end of the day, NbS means what the powerful actors using it to green their images want it to mean. The phrase “nature-based solutions” says everything and nothing at the same time. Its proponents argue that such a broadly encompassing term provides opportunities to highlight a whole range of beneficial, biodiversity-protecting practices at the same time, and that packaging all these together in this term might help mobilize protection from a range of drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem loss by calling attention to the myriad ways that societies benefit from “nature.”  But the opportunities provided by the catchall term must be weighed against the risks and dan

The 2019 IPBES   Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services   identifies population growth as one of the key indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, and states,   “changes to the direct drivers of nature deterioration cannot be achieved without transformative change that simultaneously addresses the indirect drivers.’’ [i] While the current draft goals and targets for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework [ii]  do reference the impact of population growth on biodiversity loss in a small number of specific contexts, they do not sufficiently acknowledge the plasticity of future population growth and the policy options that can be utilised to reduce population pressures on biodiversity globally.  Explicit recognition within the Global Biodiversity Framework of future projected population growth as something that is not fixed, but variable and which can be influenced through policy, would help to enable relevant action which could limit population pressure and pro