Global Canopy Dashboard: 140 Million European Jobs Exposed to Nature Loss
Global Canopy Dashboard: 140 Million European Jobs Exposed to Nature Loss #
New data released at the United Nations biodiversity summit in Armenia puts 140 million jobs across the EU, United Kingdom, and Switzerland at potential risk from ecological decline. That figure represents roughly 60% of the entire employed workforce in the region, according to analysis from environmental data organisation Global Canopy.
The figures come from Global Canopy’s ENCORE Insights: Country Dashboard, released during COP17, the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, currently taking place in Armenia. The tool is designed to help central banks, governments, financial regulators, insurers, and asset managers quantify how exposed national economies and key economic sectors are to nature degradation, from both domestic sources and international supply chains.
Germany faces the largest absolute exposure in the analysis, with up to 21.8 million jobs at potential risk, representing roughly €1 trillion in annual wages. The UK is close behind, with 20.6 million jobs potentially exposed and annual wages of around £650 billion at stake. France follows with 16.3 million jobs at risk and €813 billion in wages, while the Netherlands and Switzerland could see 5.8 million and 2.7 million jobs affected, respectively.
Beyond employment, the data suggests that as much as €8.2 trillion in goods and services consumed each year across the region, approximately half of total consumption, could be disrupted by nature loss, with potential consequences including supply scarcity and price shocks for consumers and businesses.
“140 million is a huge number of jobs, equivalent to around 60% of all people employed in the EU, UK and Switzerland,” said Dr Claudia Gray, nature-related finance director at Global Canopy, according to the organisation’s analysis. “It shows the vast number of livelihoods that could be disrupted given the huge dependence of national economies on the infrastructure that nature provides.”
The risks flagged by the dashboard include reduced working hours and wages caused by operational disruption, changes to job requirements, and difficulties sourcing goods and services. In a worst-case scenario where businesses fail to adapt, Global Canopy warns that bankruptcy and wider financial instability could follow.
The dashboard draws on ENCORE and EXIOBASE data and is aimed at giving financial policymakers a quantitative basis for nature-related risk assessments, an area that has moved up regulatory agendas in recent years as biodiversity loss increasingly draws comparison to systemic financial risk.
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