Biodiversity Law & Policy: Snakes and Ladders
In this blog, we discuss the latest developments in biodiversity policy around the World in the lead up to the COP16 Convention on Biological Diversity later this year.
The next meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity ‘COP16’ will take place between 21 October and 1 November 2024 in Cali, Colombia. The main emphasis is likely to be on implementation measures and machinery for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This article considers some of the significant recent developments and trends in the promotion of policy on nature and biodiversity. Like the childrens’ board game of Snakes and Ladders, this is characterised by steady progress and sudden pitfalls. However, the convergence of Climate and Biodiversity Laws that we have regularly advocated for at The Borrowed Earth Project, is a positive and hopeful sign.
EU Nature Restoration Law
The EU’s proposed Nature Restoration Law will be one of the most comprehensive approaches to implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework worldwide. At the time of writing, in June 2024, it appears that, unlike the EU’s statutory measures to halve pesticide use this Nature Restoration Law has just got through the EU Environment Council with a controversial change of vote by the Austrian Minister, and will now become law.
This was despite lobbying and opposition, ahead of EU Parliamentary elections in June 2024, by groups representing farmers and agribusiness in the EU. Despite being passed by the European Council and Parliament, it had not been tabled for final enactment at an earlier EU Council of Ministers.
The fate of the Nature Restoration Law is a reminder of the wider work needed to ensure public understanding, participation and support for the legal framework to support environmental and climate legislation.
Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is deliberately closely modelled on the related Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). It encourages financial firms to monitor, record and disclose the impacts of their operations on nature (like the TCFD this is currently on a voluntary basis) organising the work under the headings of Governance, Strategy, Risk & Impact Management and Metrics & Targets.
The TNFD argues that –
“Nature is no longer a corporate social responsibility issue, but a core and strategic risk management issue alongside climate change.”
It is therefore important and significant that the TNFD is making quiet progress in achieving greater recognition of nature-related issues, and greater consistency with its approach, by bodies such the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting standards, and the G7 Climate, Energy and Environment Ministers.
In addition, Biodiversity and Ecosystems are one area on which companies can be required to report if they are within the scope of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU/2022/2464).
Convergence of Biodiversity and Climate Change Law
In an article in 2020, I argued that there was a need for the Biodiversity and Climate Change Treaties to converge to support each other:
“Climate Change affects biodiversity directly, and radically, just as it will affect human populations, farming, coastal countries and climate refugees. The difference between 1.5°C and 2.0°C of global warming could be the survival or disappearance of 99% of the world’s coral reefs, which in themselves are huge reservoirs of biodiversity.”
We are starting to see this convergence happening.
In an article on this website written for us in 2021, Dr Richard Benwell, CEO of the major environmental NGO Wildlife and Countryside Link discussed the ways in which laws and conventions on biodiversity could be strengthened by drawing from the experience gained in climate change agreements.
2021 also saw the publication of the landmark report on the Economics of Biodiversity by Sir Partha Dasgupta, which we summarised in a short blog that you can find here.
The headline messages of that report were a reminder of first principles –
“Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature.
We have collectively failed to engage with Nature sustainably, to the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on.
Our unsustainable engagement with Nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations.
At the heart of the problem lies deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure.
The solution starts with understanding and accepting a simple truth: our economies are embedded within Nature, not external to it.
We need to change how we think, act and measure success.
(i) Ensure that our demands on Nature do not exceed its supply, and that we increase Nature’s supply relative to its current level.
(ii) Change our measures of economic success to guide us on a more sustainable path.
(iii) Transform our institutions and systems – in particular our finance and education systems – to enable these changes and sustain them for future generations.
Transformative change is possible – we and our descendants deserve nothing less. “
We reflected further on the converging courses of nature protection and addressing climate change in our short 6 minute film Biodiversity and Climate Change. This considers what biodiversity is, why it matters, how it is threatened, the links with climate change and what is being done about it.
The film also references the signature in 2023 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework which we summarised here. This Agreement, signed by 188 countries at the COP15 meeting of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is the most recent and most important expression of international agreement on what needs to be done to protect biodiversity and to halt and reverse its decline. As with climate change, the issue will be the full and effective implementation of the international Agreement.
It is therefore hugely encouraging to see widespread recognition, both internationally and with national governments, that Biodiversity and Climate Change need to be tackled together. This is reflected in the very important Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People made in Dubai by the Presidents of the COP28 climate negotiations and of the COP15 Biodiversity negotiations.
“In this year of the first Global Stocktake, and on the occasion of convening at COP28 during Nature, Land Use and Ocean Day, we affirm that there is no path to fully achieve the near- and long-term goals of the Paris Agreement or the 2030 goals and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework without urgently addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation together in a coherent, synergetic and holistic manner, in accordance with the best available science.”