Biodiversity

Description

Biodiversity programs help conserve the most biologically significant ecosystems on the planet. They promote U.S. national and economic security objectives by empowering good governance, establishing strong policies, and protecting the natural habitats vital to human health, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development.

What does it buy?

Funds are provided to partners through grants, cooperative agreements, and other mechanisms to implement programs. These activities, for example, safeguard fisheries in the Caribbean using coral reefs and mangroves to shield coastal communities from natural disasters like hurricanes and tropical storms. They work to ensure watersheds provide an abundance of clean water to millions of people across Africa. Biodiversity programs also build local capacity to conserve and protect tropical forests under threat throughout Latin America.

Why is it important?

• In FY 2016, as a result of USAID assistance, more than 1.5 million people had more income, better jobs, and other economic gains through sustainable natural resource management and biodiversity conservation.
• 40% of intrastate conflicts within the past 60 years were strongly linked to the competition for natural resources, resulting in a staggering loss of human life, widespread population displacement, and chronic instability, which in many cases, foments violent extremism.
• Biodiversity programs help ensure wildlife is safe. Community conservancies in northern Kenya earned $1.65 million from conservation enterprises while reducing the poaching of elephants and rhinos by 35% and 78%, respectively, as a result of local investments in training, equipment, conservation education, and new ranger outposts.

Why should Americans care?

• Conservation programs support sustainable livelihoods, political stability, and good governance in regions of strategic importance to U.S. interests. This support, in turn, enhances the capacities of local and national economies to develop new and lucrative markets for American goods and services.
• Programs deter wildlife trafficking, poaching, and illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products, which are both severe conservation concerns and contribute to illicit economies that fuel conflict.

What more could be done?

• Additional funding could increase the U.S.’s ability to promote stability, sustainable development, and disaster resilience in emerging markets around the world. These initiatives could add more land and water to protected or managed status, support local capacity to manage and conserve natural resources, and more effectively combat the illegal wildlife trade.
• By enhancing funding, the U.S. can reclaim its leadership as a defender of ecological systems and habitats around the world under threat of harmful human interference. At its current pace, human activity could lead to the extinction of 1 million plant and animal species over the coming decades—a loss that would destabilize the natural productive cycles supporting all life on Earth, Americans included.
• Additional funding could help stem biodiversity loss and the growing number of environmental challenges, which could make life much harder for future generations. Improved funding could help avoid further scarcity and degradation, which threatens the natural resources necessary to secure sustainable livelihoods, political stability, and good governance in challenging regions of the world.