Last week saw some important moves by international financial institutions to respond to the Covid-19 crisis. At their Spring Meetings, the World Bank and IMF rightly focused on ensuring the global financial system has sufficient liquidity and getting emergency health support and relief as quickly as possible to the countries who need it most, and the G20 agreed a debt moratorium for low income countries. These are surely welcome first steps in the poorest parts of the world. What next?

Legend has it that five hundred years ago, Doña Ana, wife of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, fled the Andalusian court and took refuge in a magical pine forest on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River south of Seville. || An oasis that has given us so much, Doñana’s bounty is neither limitless, nor beyond failure. A bellwether of our relationship with nature, the choices we make today will determine its future and the fate of the natural world upon which we all depend.

Recently, there have been some promising moves by business on climate change and nature loss. The new Davos Manifesto calls for a better kind of capitalism which engages all stakeholders in ‘shared and sustained value creation’. And just last week, BlackRock struck a decidedly stronger tone on climate change. These are welcome commitments but must lead to action – especially given world leaders discussing climate change in Madrid last month accomplished almost nothing, with big emitters blocking efforts to reduce emissions and doing a grave injustice to the two billion people most vulnerable to climate breakdown. While the catastrophic fires in Australia continue to burn, such political inaction is looking increasingly reckless as investors scrutinize climate risks and voters turn their backs on fossil-fuel friendly politicians.

On its 50th anniversary, the World Economic Forum has launched a new Davos Manifesto and its founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, makes the case for a better kind of capitalism that engages all stakeholders in “shared and sustained value creation.” This is a welcome development, but we should treat it with some caution. As Paul Polman, chair of the Saïd Business School, recently asked, “even though we know how to solve poverty and climate change, do we care enough to do so?”

Off the Atlantic coast of West Africa lies a lone, small, densely forested island with a tiny lighthouse. Otherwise untouched, it also boasts another more impressive beacon — a magical golden beach. Here, every year, between July and October, driven by instinct, thousands of green sea turtles from all over West Africa return to the very place they were born.

When as a young man in 1948, my father, Luc Hoffmann, came down from the Swiss mountains, settled in the marshes of the Camargue and bought the Tour du Valat estate, imagining a centre dedicated to studying wetlands, he understood two things – the scale of the threat facing the Camargue from drainage and development, and that saving it meant not just protecting wildlife but also demonstrating nature’s benefit to people. Although the environmental threats we face today are infinitely more complex and global in scale, these two insights – seemingly so obvious now but novel at the time – have only become more salient and more pressing as time has passed.

From five or ten years out, making sustainability commitments for the end of a decade is a seductive proposition for governments and sectors of all varieties. This is certainly true in the maritime world. Yet on the threshold of the new decade, it’s clear we’re on a collision course with reality. As 2019 closes, we’re fast approaching key deadlines for ocean governance and conservation, and the general consensus is that we’re going to miss the majority of the targets we’ve set.

Lynda Mansson, Director General of the MAVA Foundation, introduces a new series of stories offering insight and inspiration for contemporary conservation from five iconic natural sites supported by the Foundation and its distinguished founder, Luc Hoffmann. It’s been said that sharing knowledge is a way of achieving immortality. For the MAVA Foundation, soon to end its grant-making after funding frontline conservation in some of the world’s most unique natural environments for more than a quar

In Southern France, where the Rhône meets the Mediterranean Sea, there’s a magical place where water and land embrace, where countless ponds, islets, marshes, reeds and streams fuse and stretch toward an infinite horizon, and blend with the sky. The Provençal people call it the place with no borders — ‘n’a cap marca’. Welcome to the Camargue — a waterland without parallel. Not just a kingdom of birds but a source of blessing and bounty for people as much as wildlife.

Plastic is brilliant – and everywhere. Our modern life depends on it. And its low-cost and material advantages make it indispensable in everything from household goods, medical equipment and bank notes, to packaging, motor vehicles, buildings and fishing nets. Yet as useful as it is, our ever-increasing reliance on single-use plastics, a global throwaway culture and poor waste management, have created a ubiquitous problem. Plastic pollution is choking our planet – imperilling marine life, contaminating the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink, and suffocating our rivers and oceans.

Every two weeks, a language disappears, forever — because the people that speak them, the majority of whom are indigenous, are ignored, excluded, displaced or marginalised. When we lose a language, we lose unique and irreplaceable culture and knowledge.

Our new briefing, ‘Nature in all the Goals’, shows how nature-based solutions can improve lives, reduce inequality and help deliver the SDGs — including those under review at the HLPF this week, such as Goal 8 on promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, Goal 10 on reducing inequality, and Goal 13 on combating climate change.

Here’s why leading international organizations are launching Business for Nature – a new global coalition uniting the business voice for nature – at this week’s WEF New Champions meeting in China and the Trondheim Biodiversity Conference in Norway. While nature’s true value is priceless, the business case for investing in its protection and restoration is clear. It provides services to the global economy worth an estimated $125 trillion per year .

The most cost-effective and environmentally sound way to deliver resilience and prosperity is to radically increase investment in nature-based solutions. This would help achieve emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, and deliver Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, life below water, and life on land. In meeting such enormous challenges, nature is our strongest ally.

Mind the gap - How much do we really know about the global ocean? According to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), not much. Its recent report, ‘The Science We Need for the Ocean We Want’, found only 0.04% to 4% of total research spend worldwide goes to ocean science, and revealed major disparities in national capacity to conduct research, with Small Island Developing States especially limited.

Some of the world’s top scientists have spoken — again. But IPBES’ first Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is more than just another warning. It is a siren call that Earth’s natural systems are in the red and that all that we hold dear is threatened. How we feed, fuel and finance ourselves is pushing nature to the brink. We’re using resources faster than natural systems can replenish them, and the natural capital that sustains our enterprise and prosperity is in severe decline, posing an existential threat.

As Spring properly arrived in the Northern Hemisphere this month, Sir David Attenborough brought his iconic voice and infectious joy in nature to the heart of international finance in Washington, DC. In fireside chats with financial chiefs, the legendary broadcaster made the case to IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, and World Bank CEO, Kristalina Georgieva, that financial and natural systems have much in common. He warned that while it’s obviously ‘silly’ to eat into one’s financial capital, that’s precisely what we’re doing with our natural capital.

Without a dramatic shift beyond ‘business as usual’ — in both business and conservation — natural systems that support modern society will collapse. Traditional approaches aren’t delivering fast enough — but using philanthropic funding as risk capital, we have an opportunity to accelerate prototyping, fast track new business models and ventures for sustainability, and unlock some of the $502 billion in impact investment assets already available.

As Earth Hour 2019 approaches, James Gitau, WWF Governance Practice Intern, and Delfin Ganapin, WWF Governance Practice Lead, celebrate the passion and energy young people bring to solving global challenges and call on today’s leaders to listen and help them lead.