The Secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity and of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have called for the conservation of biological diversity and the ecological restoration of ecosystems to be reflected in national drought management policies.

The recommendation was made in a recent workshop on the role of biodiversity in national drought management policies in Geneva, Switzerland attended participants and experts representing 12 government agencies and inter-governmental organizations.

The workshop was convened in the framework of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, with a specific focus on the aspect of enhancing ecosystem resilience and the restoration and safeguarding of ecosystems that provide essential services, including services related to water.

The workshop was intended, in particular, to support the integration of ecosystem-based approaches for adaptation into, among others, disaster-risk reduction strategies and sustainable land management strategies.

The output paper said there is now an urgent need for action across a range of government sectors and to increase awareness of the need for action and suggested that the process of integrating the role of biodiversity in national drought management policies should start immediately.

It also recommended that the policy frameworks provided by the World Meteorological Organization, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the Ramsar Convention and other international conventions, programmes and strategies should accommodate the role of biodiversity within drought policies and strategies in a coordinated manner,

The participants also suggested that national drought management policies and national accounting systems should reflect the value of ecosystem services in relation to drought management and that methodologies are now needed to better estimate and calculate these values. The risk of loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services from drought disasters should be accounted for in the development of national drought management policies, with a view to promoting sustainable investments.

The workshop is yet another reflection of the increasing emphasis now being placed on the need to quantify and assign explicit economic value to the natural environment – and the damage that is created by over-exploitation of natural resources.

In April The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) global initiative, which is focused on drawing attention to the economic benefits of biodiversity and to highlight the growing cost of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, published a major report on the issue.

Produced by the TEEB for Business Coalition, a global, multi stakeholder platform for supporting the uptake of natural capital accounting in business decision-making, Natural Capital at Risk – The Top 100 Externalities of Business addresses the issues surrounding risks which are growing from over-exploitation of increasingly scarce, unpriced natural capital.

The study says that growing business demand for natural capital, and falling supply due to environmental degradation and events such as drought, are contributing to natural resource constraints, including water scarcity.

The study, which presents natural capital risk in financial terms to provide a business perspective, says that the world’s 100 biggest risks are costing the economy around $4.7 trillion per year in terms of the environmental and social costs of lost ecosystem services and pollution.