Biodiversity challenge 'flashing red'

By Andrew Hammond

This year's International Day for Biological Diversity is perhaps the most important ever with an increasing number of scientists highlighting a sixth great extinction facing the planet.

The U.N. now estimates we have as few as three years left to preserve the hospitality of our world and the diversity of the species that inhabit it. This requires nothing less than a radical change in our relationship with nature and other living beings.

The U.N.'s latest global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services highlights the responsibility of human activities in the massive loss of biodiversity. Not only are an estimated million plant and animal species now on the verge of dying off but monitored wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of around 70 percent in the past half-century.

The fact that this cannot go on is increasingly recognized not just by governments and campaigning groups, but by the private sector too. More and more businesses are aware that at least half of global GDP is estimated to be critically dependent on healthy functioning ecosystems ― either directly from the use of resources like water and processes like pollination, as well as conditions like soil health, or via indirect activities that rely on those natural processes.

In this context, the reason why this year's Biodiversity Day is so important is not because of the crisis in the natural world. In addition, there may now be a precious window of opportunity to arrest and hopefully reverse the huge range of challenges that are fueling the biodiversity crisis, including climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and urbanization.

This window has arisen because of the agreement at last year's U.N. COP 15 (the 15th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity) summit in Montreal. Hence why the theme of Saturday's big event is "From Agreement to Action: Build Back Biodiversity".

The Montreal agreement is important for multiple reasons, including the deal to phase out environmentally harmful subsidies. It is estimated that 1.8 trillion dollars of subsidies ― equivalent to about 2 percent of global GDP ― are provided to industries that are driving nature loss and climate change. Nations are already committed at the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow to "phase down and out" all "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. So nature-harming subsidies were the next step in this discussion in Montreal.

Another important discussion in Montreal is centered on corporate reporting. The intent here is to, ultimately, require governments to lay out plans for firms ― beginning with the largest businesses in sectors with the most negative impacts ― to disclose their biodiversity commitments and dependencies.

However, as important a breakthrough as Montreal was, it now needs to be delivered speedily with the goal of making the treaty as consequential for stemming biodiversity loss as the 2015 Paris Agreement still might be for action on climate change. The need is particularly pressing as Montreal comes, tragically, after countries failed to meet a single one of the targets set over the last decade.

More than 20 targets were created by a U.N. working group in the years leading up to COP 15. Delivering on these will be as difficult, and possibly much more so, as agreeing upon them. In Montreal last year, agreeance necessitated painstaking negotiations which included several key sticking points, including how ambitious the new plan should have been; how it will be financed; and how to ensure progress is measured.

With the stakes in play so high, it will be critical for governments now to transpose into domestic law all the key commitments agreed in Montreal. The country "commitments" put forward there will be most credible ― and durable beyond the next set of national elections ― if they are backed up by national legislation which is difficult to roll back.

One key challenge here is that so few heads of government were at the Montreal event. This reflects the fact that even a significant number of those governments that have sought to show leadership on key environmental issues such as climate change have not ― yet ― extended this to the fight to protect biodiversity.

One way to change this might be to ensure there is a greater discussion of biodiversity issues at other global forums, including the upcoming Japanese-chaired G7, Indian-hosted G20 and Dubai-chaired COP 28 climate summit. The Dubai global warming event appears particularly relevant given that climate change is increasingly accelerating the loss of biodiversity and key ecosystems, including biodiverse forestry, which may well be a death knell to the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature goal in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

So with the Montreal deal now badly needing next steps implementation, the world is at a crossroads. Failure to deliver speedily will be a disaster, yet success still holds the possibility of a powerful new framework for nature that becomes a foundation stone of sustainable development for billions across the world in the 2020s and beyond.

Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.