Sostenibilidad

Nine year old Gregório refuses to shower. Yes, you read that correctly! He absolutely refuses to shower, not because of childish stubbornness, but because he is fully committed to helping his 20 million neighbors in São Paulo find creative ways to conserve water during the unprecedented drought that has plagued the city over the past year. Gregório is adamant about his “shower strike”. In order to save water, he explained to his mother that showering just once a week should be more than enough under the present times of hardship.

When I first got the call asking me to take on the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Program (BIO), I had been looking for a way to refocus my work on biodiversity at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). I was intrigued by the opportunity to explore the implications of ecosystem services for our work as a development bank and decided to make a leap of faith.

The earth’s natural resources, biodiversity and ecosystems collectively make up our planet’s Natural Capital, which is the foundation of socioeconomic development of current and future generations. Natural capital generates ecosystem services which make a direct contribution to human well-being.Ecosystem services are classified in four groups:Provisioning services are outputs of ecosystem services which include food, fuel and water.

Each year, the UN chooses a theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity. Every theme is geared to increase the understanding and awareness of the biodiversity issues it relates to. Climate change was the focus of 2007, just before the first Kyoto protocol commitment period. Biodiversity and climate change are fundamentally linked. Worldwide, about 72000 plant species are used for medical purposes, of which 21% are endangered.

Small hydroelectric plants (SHP) have been conceived in Argentina as part of the strategy to address climate change under Nationally Appropriated Mitigation Actions (NAMA), which form part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The IDB, together with the Government of the Province of Salta, and the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, developed a proposal for NAMA related to SHP.