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Life on Land
Forewords
South-East Asia has many dry years ahead. This should come as no surprise. Many parts of the region have regularly been stricken by droughts that have destroyed crops heightened fire risks and led to acute shortages of drinking water. The hardest hit are the poor especially farming communities that rely on regular rainfall for their annual crops and who have few resources to fall back on during periods of rain shortfall. They are already likely to live on the degraded land that is most vulnerable to the effects of drought.
Executive summary
South-East Asia is regularly hit by droughts. Though starting slowly droughts can have devastating cumulative impacts – striking hardest at the poor and heightening inequality as well as degrading land and increasing the prospects of violent conflict. There will be many more dry years ahead and the area affected by drought is likely to shift and expand. Increasing resilience to drought will require much better forecasting and more efficient forms of response at both national and regional levels.
Acknowledgements
This study was prepared by Lorena Jaramillo Lika Sasaki Malick Kane David Vivas Frederic Perron-Welch Lorenzo Formenti Robert Hamwey Mario de Queiroz Monteiro Lucas Assunçao and Lalen Lleander from the Trade Environment Climate Change and Sustainable Development Branch (TED) of UNCTAD.
Linking trade and biodiversity
Biodiversity is being lost at an accelerating rate which has direct impacts on the provision of essential resources for our human needs and economy. The BioTrade Congress provided a global platform to discuss the role of trade and private sector engagement in support of biodiversity conservation. This timely discussion also provided inputs to the negotiations on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework which will be adopted in at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP15) in October 2020.
Buyers and sellers’ exchange
This session provided a space for BioTrade SMEs and other suppliers from Africa Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean to present their portfolio of natural products and ingredients and share their experience with potential buyers and partners from Europe Asia Africa and the Americas in an informal setting.
Abbreviations used in this report
Executive Summary
Biodiversity plays an essential role and represents a key component towards sustaining human societies our well well-being and our global economy. Its importance has often been overlooked and taken for granted not just by decision-makers but also by humans as a collective. As a result we are now experiencing some of the biggest declines in biodiversity of our time.