The word “Green” has different contexts – sometimes to refer to broad environment and climate challenges (as we use in GreenTech or how it is used in defining Green Growth or a Green Economy ) – we are using the word in this Green Environment chapter to refer to the part of the environment related to biodiversity, forests, and landscapes – although these inevitably do lead to other parts of the larger “Green” context.
The “Green” environment is critical for sustainable development, especially related to the way biodiversity, forests, and landscapes are managed. We face unprecedented challenges in terms of species loss, deforestation and forest degradation, and degrading landscapes, leading to a range of social, environmental, and economic impacts on communities around the world.
Over half the tropical rainforests have been destroyed since the 1960s. Globally, about 24 billion tons of fertile topsoil is lost every year after it takes about 500 years to form an inch of topsoil! The planet has lost 40% of its species (between 1970 and 2000) and a million plant and animal species are near extinction. About 70 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and depend on biodiversity for their survival and well-being. Ecosystem services from Nature based solutions, focused on climate, have an estimated global benefit currently worth $170 billion (IUCN).
The Green Environment is central to development. Much of the world’s poor depends on the services provided by the Green Environment for their livelihoods and survival. There is an urgent opportunity of help protect biodiversity and related habitats and ecosystems e.g. forests and marine areas, as well as restore sustainable productivity of landscapes (including deforested and degraded lands) through afforestation, agroforestry, silvopastoralism, sustainable soil and land management, integrated water resources management, and climate-smart agriculture to provide social, environmental, and economic benefits.
Enjoy the Our Planet series (with spectacular footage and David Attenborough’s narration) that Netflix has currently made accessible for free on YouTube. Not only does it provide a global perspective of the green environment – especially the biodiversity in forests, freshwater, deserts, grasslands, coastal seas, frozen and other landscapes but is a call to action to help protect this valuable and threatened resource.
Note that under settings you can choose to have subtitles in many languages (and auto-translate subtitles in several more).
Modern technologies are “disrupting” traditional ways of addressing the persistent and evolving challenges related to the Green environment as well as helping prepare to scale up the opportunities today. These could include aspects of information (including new ways to collect, analyze, access, and visualize data for decision support), institutions (including modernizing the ways institutions collaborate and build capacity), and investments (including new approaches to protect areas and undertake land, water, agriculture, and other activities in a coordinated and scaled manner in a landscape context).
Modern technologies are “disrupting” traditional ways of addressing these persistent and evolving problems related to the Green environment.
Some glimpses of the technology and innovation that help us rethink the Green Environment of the future are illustrated in the following sections.