Giving Compass' Take:

• Ranjit Barthakur implores readers to start talking about ecological destruction and economic health as interconnected entities.

• How has COVID-19 made abundantly clear the impact of environmental destruction on the economy? What are you doing to encourage rapid response to rising temperatures and extreme weather right now?

• Read more about why businesses should start addressing ecological destruction.

We usually think of livelihoods and lives separately, however, it is now time to imagine a more integrated approach. Consider these statistics:

  • The 2019 UN-IPBES report—the most recent attempt to holistically assess the major threats to the world’s biodiversity, internationally and across stakeholders—estimates natural disasters caused by biodiversity loss and climate change cost the planet approximately USD 300 billion annually.
  • In India, one-third of our GDP depends on nature, and another third is fairly dependent on nature—that’s more than 60 percent of the country’s GDP.
  • Fifty-seven percent of our rural communities depend on forest ecosystems for their livelihoods

In essence, ecology is economy. Multiple studies have told us that ecological degradation will spur more droughts, desertification of once fertile soil, water and food insecurity, mass displacement of people, reduced crop yields, and more.

In our work at Balipara Foundation, we are already witnessing what an ecologically degraded, climate unstable future might look like. When we resumed fieldwork in April—after a month-long lockdown due to COVID-19—our communities along the Bhutan-Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border told us story after story about how families were unable to buy seeds or had missed out on crucial planting windows for crops, because of the lockdown. A few months later, the agroforestry plots we had set up were partially swept away in fierce floods, the likes of which had not been witnessed by the local community in the past three decades.

Non-existent crops, fallow fields, sudden and destructive flooding, and subsequently dried up jobs, are effects that are likely to be amplified in the next decade, whether through climate change or emerging pandemics.

Read the full article about the effects of ecological destruction on the economy by Ranjit Barthakur at India Development Review.