STATISTICIANS SET TO CONQUER BIOVERSITY DEPLETION
MY VILLAGE of Qibing in Lesotho borders Wepener in South Africa. It is a typical victim of the microcosm of the tragedy of the commons as far as biodiversity depletion is concerned; it also has a fair share of the macro consequences of climate change. It boasted reed filled wetland systems, birds of all kinds flourished. We mostly lived off the land and cash requirements were usually met through the sale of agricultural products.
Of course, the migrant labour system to the mining complex in South Africa was also a big part of the economy.
Visiting home 50 years later, the vast wetlands had vanished: the birds, frogs the vegetation including medicinal ones, have disappeared. The place is barren and the reeds that were used for thatching are a distant memory.
This is why Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) are so important.
For the past 15 days I have been on the road shuttling between Europe, Africa and the small island countries where the agenda focused on different aspects of the SDGS. In Zurich we focused on a plan for multidimensional biodiversity measurement.
As the chair of the steering committee implementing the
World Bank funded African Centre of Excellence in statistics based in Abidjan, we met in Paris to shape what the deliverables of this should be. At the level of products we identified the elevation of the International Comparison Programme to inform the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement .
Fast-forward to the Seychelles the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative hosted the Seventh Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network summit. This initiative jointly with the UN Development Programme will launch two important reports next month.
The first is the Global Multidimensional Poverty report. Focusing back on the meeting on biodiversity measurement held in Zurich.
Carbon emissions and greenhouse effects are mostly macro scale and are driven by depletion of large scale industrial production inputs such as renewable natural materials like trees and use of specific energy systems, such as coal for instance. However, destruction of wetlands may be a result of the tragedy of the commons such as overgrazing.
The interplay of biodiversity and climate change is a dually causal and mutually reinforcing phenomenon. Rapidly changing weather patterns with extreme values are symptoms of climate change and the effects of change on flora, fauna and human activity is disruptive and destructive. Statisticians’ role and that of the UN Statistics Commission is from the angle of the System of Economic and Environment Accounts and Natural Capital Accounting.
An important distinction of drivers and impacts of macro systems such as climate change and micro systems such as the localised actions amongst resource-poor communities on ecosystems are important in the design of such statistical systems. Using these statistical systems, the SDGS highlight areas of progress and areas for more action.