Strengthening disaster risk reduction in national biodiversity strategies and action plans

Nature is humanity’s first line of defence against many hazards. Yet, biodiversity loss, poor environmental management and ecosystem degradation contribute to the cascading and compounding risk of disasters, increasing exposure and vulnerability, undermining coping capacity and leading to higher socioeconomic losses. At the same time, disasters5 can impact ecosystems and the functions and services they provide, thereby weakening nature’s contribution to people. Disasters should be understood as much more than specific events. They should be placed in the wider risk landscape, considering interactions with complex social, economic, political, human and ecological systems. The systemic nature of risk can lead to compounding and cascading disaster impacts, affecting all parts of society. The need for concerted efforts to manage causal relationships, interdependencies and interactions applies as much to goal and target setting and policymaking as it does to planning and implementation.6 An understanding of the drivers and root causes of risks to biodiversity and human well-being can assist in revealing chronic pre-existing systemic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and exposure, which in turn provide insights into the societal challenges that must be overcome to avoid or reduce impacts, losses and damages. These societal challenges include declining ecosystem health impacting their functions and services, environmental degradation and the unsustainable use of natural resources. They also include other interconnected drivers of risk, such as climate change, poverty, social inequality, unplanned urbanization, poor land-use planning, land degradation, poor governance and poor health, among others.7 Figure 1 provides an overview of the most common risk drivers, including systemic ones.

source :

https://www.undrr.org/media/100501/download?startDownload=20241030