Biodiversity

Description

Biodiversity programs help conserve the most biologically significant ecosystems on the planet. Results-oriented biodiversity programming applies scientific and evidence-based approaches to protect natural habitats vital to human health, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development.

Use of Funds

Biodiversity programs build local capacity to conserve and protect ecosystems under threat, address global drivers of biodiversity loss, including illegal poaching and resource exploitation, and catalyze the growth of sustainable livelihoods and greater food security. Programs also work to ensure watersheds provide clean water and conserve and protect tropical forests.

Justification

• Nature is declining at an unprecedented rate, with 1 million plant and animal species facing extinction, many within decades.
  • Up to 50% of species are forecast to lose most of their suitable climate conditions by 2100 under the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
  • We will still see around 25% species loss if we limit global temperature rise to 2°C, as set in the Paris Agreement.
• Over 1.6 billion people directly depend on forests for subsistence, livelihoods, employment, and income generation. Approximately 3 billion people depend on wild-caught and farmed seafood as a main source of protein. Biodiversity losses will produce widespread food insecurity and economic deprivation.
• In the past 50 years, almost 70% of wildlife populations have disappeared, mainly due to habitat destruction.
• Biodiversity loss, as well as other human-driven impacts, are more often being linked to the occurrence, risk, and spread of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. Human disturbances to natural ecosystems can affect the existing patterns of infectious diseases by modifying species’ abundance, distribution, interactions, and movement.