Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Life on Land

Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth SeriesHarnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Life on LandJanuary 2018Towards an Inclusive Bio-Economy ContentsWorld Economic Forum® © 2018 – All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced orTransmitted in any form or by any means, including Photocopying and recording, or by any information Storage and retrieval system.Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Life on Land is published by the World Economic Forum’s System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Environment and Natural Resource Security in partnership with PwC and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. It was made possible with funding from the MAVA Foundation. About “The Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth” series“The Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth” is a publication series highlighting opportunities to solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges by harnessing technological innovations supported by new and effective approaches to governance, financing and multi-stakeholder collaboration. About the World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. World Economic Forum 91-93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland3 Preface: The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Earth5 Foreword6 The current challenge8 Efforts to preserve biodiversity to date11 An unprecedented opportunity from the Fourth Industrial Revolution15 Towards an inclusive bio-economy19 Building the enabling environment 20 Acknowledgements22 Annex I23 Annex II24 Endnotes 3Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Life on LandPrefaceThe Fourth Industrial Revolution and the EarthThe stress on the earth’s natural systems caused by human activity has considerably worsened in the 25 years since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit in Brazil. As a result of the “great acceleration”1 in human economic activity since the mid-20th century, research from many earth system scientists’ suggests that life on land could be entering a period of unprecedented environmental systems change. For example: –The earth is losing its biodiversity at mass extinction rates. One in five species on earth now faces extinction and scientists estimate that this incidence will rise to 50% by the end of the century unless urgent action is taken.2 –A record 29.7 million hectares of tree cover was lost in 2016 – an area about the size of New Zealand. Worryingly, this loss is about 51% higher than in 2015.3 –Today’s greenhouse gas levels have not been seen for at least 3 million years, with carbon dioxide levels likely to remain above 400 parts per million. Record-breaking temperatures were recorded in 2014, 2015 and 2016, with 2017 set to break records too.4 –Water security experts at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) fear that, within the next decade, up to 30% of food production may be at risk because of climate induced water stress. The IWMI also estimates that more than 70% of rivers in the world are now so abstracted that they hardly reach the sea.5 –Widespread nitrogen and phosphate pollution from poorly applied fertilizer has washed into seas over the past few decades, affecting fish stocks and creating, among other effects, oxygen starved “dead zones” in over 400 locations around the world.6 These are wide-ranging and serious impacts on the earth’s land systems resulting from human activity. Scientists are concerned that they might even interconnect to trigger cascading “negative feedback loops”. These could flip the earth system into a wholly new state, characterized by a period of environmental disequilibrium, something far from the “Goldilocks” conditions (not too hot and not too cold) that the Holocene period has provided for human activity to flourish over the last 10,000 years.Yet, at the same time as this great acceleration in human activity has put unprecedented pressure on our earth systems, so too has an incredible transformation taken place in our science and technology capabilities. It is now possible to understand and model complex systems at unprecedented speed and scale.Just one of today’s standard tablet devices possesses the equivalent processing power of over 5,000 desktop computers from the mid-1980s, the height of the NASA Space Shuttle programme. Storing 1GB of data in 1997 would have cost more than $10,000 a year; today it costs approximately $0.03. In 2003, the first human genome was sequenced. It took more than a decade and cost $2.7 billion. Today, a genome can be sequenced in a few hours and for less than 1,000 dollars. The first app appeared in 2008 when Apple founder Steve Jobs enabled outside developers to create applications for the iPhone. Today, just a decade later, the app economy is worth $1.3 trillion,7 more than the total r