1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background After two long years of living with the COVID-19 pandemic and its disastrous effect on lives and livelihoods, the world in December 2021 is finally seeing a welcome light at the end of a very dark corridor! Economies around the world are slowly starting to open up and humankind is anxiously anticipating a welcome return to normal life. But have the lessons garnered from the pandemic truly hit home, namely, that biodiversity loss and illegal wildlife trading drastically impact our health and also the health of the planet – in particular it not only opens the door to zoonotic diseases (Keesing & Ostfeld, 2021) but also aggravates climate change-associated catastrophes, such as droughts, storms, floods, forest fires and melting polar ice caps (Watson, 2020). From an examination of various global plans put forward as National Recovery Packages, it would appear that most countries are burying their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. The substantial stimulus packages do not contain provisions that would ensure sustainable development and safeguards to restrain further loss of natural capital. This is despite a growing call to integrate biodiversity conservation into COVID-19 recovery plans to ensure economies are more resilient to systemic shocks and to prevent future pandemics (OECD, 2020). Unfortunately, this is particularly evident in plans put forward by the less developed economies (Daly et al., 2020), primarily because of a need to get back “to business as usual” – but this could also be a fast track to ruin whether advocated within the region or globally. Asia and in particular Southeast Asia, which comprises the 10-member ASEAN bloc as well as Timor Leste must not go down that road more so as it is blessed with abundantly rich natural resources both in its terrestrial and seascapes. These however need to be treasured and sustainably managed since Earth’s biodiversity loss and climate change have already brought it to a “Tipping Point” that may even lead to a Sixth Mass Destruction (Ceballos et al., 2015). Development heralded by The Industrial Revolution in developed countries, has endangered the “triple bottom line” to sustainable development that requires a balance between social, economic and environmental development. In contrast, league tables such as the BII (estimates the percentage of natural biodiversity that remains across the world and in individual countries plotted across various nations; Scholes & Biggs, 2005) reveals that it is Asia that now houses the bulk of land and sea areas that still harbour Earth’s invaluable biodiversity. This natural resource is critical as a source of food, shelter, clothing and well- being as well as for new discoveries and innovations that fuel products for better medicines, materials and peoples’ daily needs (WWF, 2020). There is an urgent need therefore to preserve it.
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