ravi menon : bending the curve of nature loss keynote remarks by mr ravi menon, managing director of the monetary authority of singapore and chair of the network for greening the financial system, at the cop15 finance and biodiversity day, montreal, 14 december 2022. * * * ladies and gentlemen, i am honoured and delighted to be able to address you on this important occasion of cop15 of the convention on biological diversity. the world is getting painfully acquainted with the impending climate crisis. there are promising efforts at mitigating this crisis, though far from what is necessary to avert disaster. but the planet faces a second crisis – – nature and biodiversity loss. the nature crisis is no less threatening than the climate crisis. but it is much less appreciated and much less is being done to mitigate it. we assiduously measure and seek to grow our physical and human capital. we speak of the importance of social and political capital. but we fail to appreciate let alone measure natural capital – the world's stock of natural resources, comprising soils, air, water, plants, animals, and minerals. these are assets that sustain our food supplies, underpin our economy and society, and enable human life. we are collectively depleting our natural capital and degrading the ecosystems that support it. we are consuming more resources than the earth can produce in a year. at current rates of consumption, we use up 1. 6 earths'worth of resources. by 2050, our annual resource use will rise to 2 earths'worth. we are degrading the ecosystems that support this natural capital. the drivers of biodiversity loss have worsened. none of the 20 aichi biodiversity targets agreed at cop10 twelve years ago have been fully achieved – only six were partially achieved. the depreciation of natural capital will affect our standard of living and quality of life. over three - quarters of the world's food crops, worth almost 600 billion us dollars, rely on insect and animal pollination. the loss of pollinators like honeybees in europe and the americas directly threatens our food security. hidden supply chain dependencies on nature account for more than half of gross value added in industries that are foundational to the global economy, including consumer goods, real estate, and transportation. nature loss also poses a major threat to public health by worsening air and water pollution. the 2015 indonesian forest fires cost 151 million us dollars in immediate health impacts, while long - term costs remain

vast array of information we have at our disposal. of course, that includes the standard econometric toolkit. but we have also been increasingly relying on text analytics and machine learning. 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches as a result, this conference is highly relevant for us at the federal reserve, and likely those at other central banks as well. more timely and accurate information and improved methodological techniques permit federal reserve staff to produce better estimates of the evolving economic outlook, which allows policymakers to make moreinformed decisions. it is reassuring to know that the use of these nontraditional data and techniques for academic research and for policy is no longer in its infancy. the breadth and depth of studies captured in the agenda display the material inroads of these data and methods into economic research. i am pleased to see colleagues and important contributors to this field on the conference program. jed kolko, julapa jagtiani, arthur turrell, and hal varian will discuss issues related to the opportunities and challenges for government and privatesector institutions in response to nontraditional data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. similarly, an academic panel with jesus fernandez - villaverde, sydney ludvigson, stephen hansen, and chiara farronato will discuss how these data and methods have helped push the research frontier in subjects ranging from macroeconomic modeling to online markets. as i noted in recent remarks, there has been a surge in excitement and trepidation about generative ai. 3 the range of social effects from this new technology could be broad. jack clark, one of the co - founders of anthropic, will soon offer a keynote, and i am sure we are all looking forward to hearing his insights on the practical applications of this new ai technology and the potential use cases for economic research and policymaking. i am especially interested in seeing progress on " explainable ai, " which can bridge the divide between the technical sphere and users. i am looking forward to any discussions on this area. these generative ai tools could also have implications closer to home, as they may influence how we conduct central bank communications. there is a growing literature that uses natural language processing techniques to discern how communications by central bankers are perceived by the news media, and, in turn, how that influences financial markets. the presentations by christopher neely, clara vega, xin zhang, and xu zhang will discuss the state of the art on this subject, which