The IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Marseilles this month, both at its Forum and Member’s Assembly represented an important step to join the global Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) community, who are rapidly advancing systems to assess the contribution of nature to the economy as its role in supporting economic growth, to the IUCN conservation community.
In advance of the WCC, the adoption of the IUCN Resolution on Accounting for Biodiversity, calling the conservation community to mobilize resources to develop and implement accounting for biodiversity, to apply accounting to support the derivation of indicators of biodiversity change and to support its mainstreaming, set the stage for important discussions held at a Forum session on its implementation (more on that below). At the Member’s Assembly, the approval of the IUCN Resolution on Towards a Policy on Natural Capital, which proposes non-binding principles – including definitions, inclusivity and implementation – to be considered in the development of an IUCN Policy on Natural Capital was yet another important milestone towards placing nature conservation at the foundation of sustainable development.
In a Forum session on Incorporating Nature in Development Planning through Natural Capital Accounting, Conservation International (CI), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and IUCN invited the WCC community to support countries’ NCA efforts to inform decisions that address all three pillars of the Sustainable Development Goals (i.e., the economy, environment, and society). Panelists and speakers stressed how the green recovery in the wake of the pandemic and climate change, presents the imperative to transform the status quo and move towards a greener economy and more sustainable management of natural resources, and the key role of SEEA EA toward such effort. They also provided a rallying cry for a concerted, long-term effort, calling the conservation community to support the implementation NCA as a transformative shift toward long-term solutions to the challenges of economic development and biodiversity conservation.