We cannot afford to lose one more inch

Nadeera Rajapakse Rubaroe, wetlands ecologist and consultant for the World Bank, considers wetlands in Sri Lankan capital Colombo to be providing such vital ecosystem services that further encroachment is simply unaffordable.

In Colombo, urban wetlands stretch across more than 22,000 hectares. They regulate temperatures, improve air quality, foster biodiversity, provide opportunities for urban farming, and retain floodwaters.

WLE scientists work with relevant government departments to promote the value of wetlands and ensure that they are adequately integrated as part of future urban planning. This is particularly important as urban settlements eat away at the green spaces that could help protect cities from the effects of climate change.

In Thailand, for example, flooding of Bangkok in 2011 cost around $41 billion. In response, scientists are advocating the concept of sponge cities – using wetlands and green spaces in urban environments to reduce flood risks.

But floods don’t just strike cities. In the Indian state of Bihar, nearly 17 million people, many of them smallholder farmers, faced flooding in 2017. A successful pilot of an index-based flood insurance scheme allowed insurers to use data from satellites to quickly provide compensation to households that lost crops to floods.

Wetlands, forests, flood plains and other environmental systems can all be considered part of the natural infrastructure that supports thriving landscapes. Treating river basins as interlinked portfolios of natural and human-built structures, such as dams and irrigation schemes, can make it easier to manage water to everyone’s benefit. This approach is being piloted in Kenya’s Tana River Basin where a multitude of users—farmers, fishers, industries and the city of Nairobi—share one river.

Turning to nature is also proving worthwhile for regulating pests attacking valuable crops, such as cotton. Ladybugs are the natural enemy of cotton-munching pests, and scientists have found that doubling the number of ladybugs in Chinese cotton fields could yield an added value of $300 million. The total value of pest regulation provided by natural enemies has been estimated to represent a worldwide value of $100 to $400 billion per year.

Recognizing the value of nature-based solutions, whether wetlands or ladybugs, has the potential to boost not only livelihoods and economies, but also the resilience of the entire ecosystem. It’s high time to consider nature a key player in sustainable development.

WLE’s partners in this work include IWMI, CIAT and IFPRI.