Thin Lei Win -
Governments are under pressure this year to agree on protecting at least 30 per cent of the planet’s land and seas by 2030, not only to conserve endangered species and ensure food and water supplies, but also to help regulate an increasingly erratic climate. This week in Rome, negotiations are underway on a new global framework to safeguard the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity, which is due to be finalised at an October conference in China.
The proposed goal to put about a third of land and oceans under some form of protection, such as by expanding national parks, is the centrepiece of a draft text outlining 20 targets.
Those include reducing pollution from plastics and other waste by half, and restoring freshwater and marine ecosystems. The new targets would replace an earlier set that expire this year, most of which have been missed.
Green groups and UN agencies have dubbed 2020 a “super year” for biodiversity due to opportunities — via the new pact and a UN “Nature Summit” in September, among others — to halt and reverse shocking declines in animal and plant species.
“Key decisions throughout this year will have direct implications for our life and the life of the living beings we share our planet with,” said Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Grouping 130 countries, IPBES warned in a flagship report last year that up to 1 million animal and plant species out of an estimated 8 million were at risk of extinction, particularly due to industrial farming and fishing.
The potential losses include medicinal plants and insects vital for pollinating food crops, as well as the destruction of coral reefs that support fish populations.
Environmentalists are now urging governments to adopt ambitious targets for 2030 and 2050 under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at its October conference, to save species and their habitats in the next 30 years. Marco Lambertini, director general of conservation group WWF International, said today’s ecological challenges were “not just about protecting pandas and tigers and elephants... but about undermining the systems that support our own well-being”.
Protecting ecosystems like wetlands and forests would also help absorb planet-heating gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and address climate change, for example.
The alarm bell in the IPBES report over the current rate of species extinction has coincided with growing public activism over the environment and climate change, boosted by the student protests sparked by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.
Lambertini said the convergence of scientific data, broader awareness and key policy events made 2020 a “super year for biodiversity”, a term WWF
coined two years ago.
Eva Zabey, executive director of Business for Nature, a coalition whose advisory group includes Unilever, Danone, H&M and Walmart, said the past year had seen “a real shift”, with companies recognising the importance of protecting biodiversity.
“One of the key messages we have is that financial performance is irrelevant on a dead planet,” she said.
Underlining this shift, the World Economic Forum’s annual risk report last month found decision-makers’ top five concerns were all linked to the environment for the first time, including biodiversity loss. At this week’s meeting in Rome, hastily relocated from China due to the coronavirus outbreak, nearly 1,000 delegates from 142 countries are negotiating the draft of the new CBD framework.
— Thomson Reuters Foundation
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