Nature-based businesses can save Mother Earth from climate hell
Apr 18, 2024
“Nature-based business offers a rare proficient opportunity of Eco-system services that can translate the benefits we receive from nature into economic terms.”
Robert Kigongo, a climate change champion and FAO trainee in nature-based business solutions
Robert Kigongo
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_______________________ A man carrying firewood walks down a steep slope. Forests are more than just trees, they improve the health of our communities
When we visited Wanale and Wagagai on Mount Elgon in 2023, the upstream blocks had considerably higher temperatures than in 2022.
A recent World Meteorological Organisation study predicts that 2024 and beyond will be warmer than 2023, the warmest year ever.
Elgon Mountain block’s temperature rise is one illustration of rising global temperatures. Unfortunately, our forests, natural water sources, land abuse, industrial pollution, and wetlands degradation have caused global warming and climatic hell.
Despite climate change’s unusual weather patterns, we have an underutilised potential to adapt and embrace climate action in the commercial monetary mode: utilising naturebased businesses to repair, protect and conserve the environment.
Let’s examine how communities, especially business-minded people who are often uninterested in Climate Change discussions and environmental conservation, can leverage nature-based businesses to make money and maximise profits from nature without destroying it through human-induced activities like deforestation, fossil fuels, coal April 13-14, 2024 43 extractions, industrial pollution, wetlands degradation, air and water pollution, which destroy ecosystems.
“Nature-based business offers a rare proficient opportunity of Eco-system services that can translate the benefits we receive from nature into economic terms” Nature-based businesses gain from ecosystem services that benefit communities. Natural capital and ecosystem services assist economic and societal capital integration.
Carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, soil conservation, and recreation services are ecosystem services associated with forest services that are not immediately apparent or tangible but have commercial value.
Our forests provide financial capital and benefits in the form of timber for fuel, paper, furniture and construction materials, and other bi-products, but ecosystem services have gone unnoticed and rarely factored into their financial costs and benefits.
Forests are more than just trees — they improve the health of our communities, businesses, and ecosystems. The most apparent products derived from nature are wood, food, medicine, and water, but certain ecosystems provide services like the quality of our water and air, which humans need to survive.
Food, forest products, water, floods, droughts, land degradation, air quality, and climate, as well as diseases, soil formation, nutrient cycling, cultural services, and values like recreation, spirituality, and religion, are important benefits for businesspeople and businesses.
Studies show benefits of ecosystem services are ten times bigger than the world’s top 50 firms. Valuing these services helps everyone understand their relevance, especially when using nature-based enterprises in environmental and conservation decisions.
Permaculture, coffee farmers, timber growers, carbon farmers, forest managers, and growers, as well as watershed service providers, eco-resorts, wildlife, and national game parks without forest management and natural resource management certification, can sell ecosystem services.
Ecosystem service carbon capture and storage claims can prove compliance with Article 5 of the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Nature-based business, which encourages ecosystem services through payments, can greatly increase Government, investor, and buyer confidence in ecosystem marketplaces.
Nature-based enterprises can promote ecosystem services and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Precautionary, if we continue to cut trees from our forest cover, degrade wetlands, pollute the air and water sources, and eventually destroy the ecosystem, Robert Kigongo the cost of repairing and mitigating these long-term effects, which endanger Homo sapiens and all other living things, will rise until it becomes unsustainable.
Ecosystem service-based enterprises can be profitable to rehabilitate the environment and preserve a beautiful landscape or ecosystem.
Thus, encouraging businesspeople to develop and invest in nature-based enterprises is more than a curiosity; it has measurable worth that even businesspeople must realise, respect, and adapt to climate action for environmental conservation.
The writer is a climate change champion and FAO trainee in nature-based business solutions
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