Environmental degradation is heightening the risk of disaster in the EU. Ecosystems provide multiple services and benefits, but face immense pressure on a global and European scale, due to changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species.
Environmental degradation, in particular damage to ecosystems and biodiversity loss, is heightening the risk of disaster. Ecosystems provide multiple services and benefits, such as regulation of climate, pests and diseases, water retention and flood control, landslide prevention and coastal protection. Unfortunately, biodiversity and ecosystems face immense pressure on a global and European scale.
The key factors that have contributed to this pressure are changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species.
Over the past 15 years, the state of ecosystems and their services in Europe has continued to deteriorate. Recent research from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) shows that ecosystems have been altered, even in protected areas. These changes have many negative impacts, including in terms of disaster risk. The demand for flood control in the EU has increased by 3 % per decade, for example, as floodplains become increasingly built up.
Degraded or disturbed ecosystems are also less resilient to disasters. For instance, forests stressed by high temperatures and drought are more vulnerable to insect attacks, which can kill large numbers of trees. In this way, a vicious circle is created where disasters further contribute to damage of the natural environment.
Environmental degradation can also lead to new risks, such as new infectious diseases.
Globally, the increase in human expansion into wildlife areas, sweeping changes in land use and ecological disruption they bring are important factors driving disease, in particular zoonoses – diseases that spread from animals to humans.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic, caused by a coronavirus spread from an animal to humans, highlights the threats from increased interactions between humans and the natural world.
The 2019 global assessment report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) warned that nature was declining globally and that the rate of species extinctions was accelerating at unprecedented rates. Three quarters of the land-based environment and about 66 % of the marine environment have already been significantly altered by human actions. The European environment — state and outlook 2020 (SOER 2020) report published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) concluded that Europe continued to consume more resources and contribute more to environmental degradation than other world regions.
Policy responses have been insufficient to halt biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystem services. The EU missed the 2020 targets set in the Biodiversity Strategy by a considerable amount.
The EEA warns that the overall outlook for Europe’s environment in the coming decades is discouraging, as ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and other global environmental challenges interact with and contribute to one another.
It is against this background that making nature healthy again has been put at the heart of the new EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
Published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022, the Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report and dedicated chapter to Biodiversity Hotspots refers that “All biodiversity hotspots are impacted, to differing degrees, by human activities” and provides additional insight on the climate induced risk on cities and settlements.
The SOER 2020 report urges European countries, leaders and policymakers to use the next decade to radically scale and speed up actions to meet Europe’s environmental targets, and avoid irreversible change and damage.
Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, the European Green Deal aims to achieve the no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. One third of the 1.8 trillion euro investments from the NextGenerationEU Recovery Plan, and the EU’s seven-year budget will finance the European Green Deal.