In what is being called a biodiversity super year the first week of March saw representatives from about 120 nations party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meet in FAO headquarters, Rome, to continue discussions begun late last year on constructing a new Global Framework for Nature. The meeting had to be moved from Kunming, China because of the situation with COVID-19. The change in location for that meeting is, of course, ironic, since the virus almost certainly crossed to humans through infection from wild species. Now more than ever, human health and wildlife health are inextricably intertwined and a clear reason why we need a better framework for interacting with the rest of nature.
Earlier, in January, the World Economic Forum gathered in Davos, Switzerland, and had before it the Forum’s annual Global Risks Report. Over the past decade, most of the environmental risks identified for businesses have been climate related, and business and government could be forgiven for thinking climate is the environmental issue. But in 2019, and even more in 2020, the Global Risks Report also identified a rapidly rising risk from biodiversity loss. In part, this follows the release in April 2019 by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem services (IPBES) of a global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The major headlines trumpeting the report’s release, even in the prestigious Journals Science and Nature, read “1 million species heading for extinction”, leaving an impression of crisis.
Like so many headline statements, the “1 million species to go extinct” may be accurate, but, equally, may be way off. The result of this focus on extinction in the IPBES Assessment also means less attention has been given to other areas of concern - or hope. For example, in response to human activities many organisms are showing rapid biological evolution. Novel ecosystems, where species are co-occurring in historically unknown combinations, are emerging and playing important roles in delivering services from ecosystems and enabling nature conservation. While these novel ecosystems do not excuse the need to address biodiversity loss, they emphasise that biodiversity change is a more important term and deserves consideration in informed decision making.
The IPBES Assessment illustrated plausible futures for biodiversity and ecosystem services through a range of policy scenarios. Most scenarios showed a bleak picture – but those that included transformative change in the policy mix showed static or improving states of nature. The question is: just what is this transformative change? How do we develop and implement it to avoid poor policies that lead to continued biodiversity loss and environmental degradation? What is the correct mechanism to facilitate finding evidenced-based and agreeable compromise across conflicting sectorial interests? Certainly no easy task, but something that government, business and civil society must collectively deliver on. Perhaps Gandhi’s famous words that “we must be the change we want to see happen in the world” perfectly characterises transformative change.
The IPBES Assessment emphasises that to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals, understanding the links and feedbacks between climate change and biodiversity must be front and centre of thinking and action by all nations. It has been clear for some time that climate change and biodiversity change are inextricably linked – but governments, NGOs and intergovernmental process still act as though they were in separate silos. Yet, the relationship between climate and biodiversity is still poorly developed, with some proposed mitigation measures to achieve the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change likely to have significant negative impacts on biodiversity. The rash of tree planting schemes being announced globally by governments and NGOs is one example, as, unless properly thought through, this can lead to worse, not improved, results for conservation with little impact on climate.
On the 13th of February the University of Portsmouth launched a new research and training Centre for Blue Governance, covering seas and freshwaters. This nascent Centre, and doubtless others, can help in facilitating innovative governance approaches, so there is coherence in law, policies and action on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Integrated governance across land and seascapes means not just legal frameworks, but a mix of policies, legal instruments and critical implementation activities combining to ensure positive trajectories for nature conservation, ecological restoration, sustainable use of biodiversity, sustainable forest management and planning for natural and engineered infrastructure.
The bottom line is, whether you are in government, business or are an active NGO, understanding the potential effects of your activities – direct or indirect – on the state of nature should be part of your daily routine. And if we have global and national governance frameworks that support and amplify individual actions, then 2020 can be the year for nature, and the 2020s can be the decade of nature.
Peter Bridgewater is a Senior Fellow at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Australia. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Bright Blue.