The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

Biodiversity

23 Dec

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, Canada, in the early hours of Monday 19th December 2022, represents a huge first step on the road towards halting and reversing the precipitate decline in biodiversity and species extinctions.

It is a reminder that even when geopolitical tensions are at their most acute, with Russian missiles landing in the streets of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, the world is still , sometimes, capable of working together for the common good.

COP15 President and China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu proved to be a determined driver of progress and the gavel alike. Canada played a huge part in achieving success, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister for Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault, and U.N. Secretariat Executive Director Elizabeth Maruma Mrema.

To all participants in the negotiations who worked so hard for this outcome, respectful greetings and sincere thanks!

To the world’s governments who signed up to the four goals and twenty three targets in the Framework, the message must be “Stand and deliver!”

Now more than ever we need committed national implementation, consistent national policies and effective national legislation to make this Framework a reality in each of our countries.

This article considers the background to the issue of biodiversity loss that has led up to these talks, and some of the main features of the Global Biodiversity Framework itself.

Background

“The biosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, is being altered to an unparalleled degree across all spatial scales. Biodiversity – the diversity within species, between species and ecosystems – is declining faster than at any time in human history.”

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ‘IPBES’

“Human action threatens more species with global extinction now than ever before. An average of around 25 percent of species in assessed animal and plant groups are threatened ... suggesting that around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss. Without such action there will be a further acceleration in the global rate of species extinction, which is already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than it has averaged over the past 10 million years.”

IPBES

This was essentially the challenge that the 15th Conference of Parties, ‘COP15’ of the Convention on Biological Diversity was meeting to address in Montreal, Canada in December 2022. Human development and climate change, taken together, are contributing to an unparalleled decline in biodiversity and a mass extinction of species on a scale only witnessed rarely in the earth’s geological history. There have been five great extinctions in world history, and we are witnessing, and contributing to, the sixth.

As the writer and conservationist Gerald Durrell put it:

“The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider’s web. If you touch one thread you send shudders running through all the other threads. We are not just touching the web we are tearing great holes in it.”

In some parts of the world, challenges to biodiversity are particularly acute. In our interview in the summer with Dr Rich Young, Director of Conservation Knowledge for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Dr Young said that:

“We know that a high proportion of known species are threatened with extinction – 40% of amphibians, 25% of mammals, 90% of all lemurs. This follows years of progressive declines in species numbers. In some areas, the problem is particularly acute, for example, SouthEast Asia, resulting from agricultural deforestation. In Madagascar, only 13%-14% of the forest is left.”

We also asked Dr Young to consider why the survival of a single species really mattered, and he gave this comprehensive answer:

“I would argue that each species has an intrinsic value, that sometimes gets lost in utilitarian debates. Species are intrinsically valuable and have taken millions of years to evolve.

Biodiversity benefits are often unexpected. The more diverse the biodiversity, the greater its resilience – we can see that for example with agricultural crops when a threat to staples often sends people back to wild varieties to look for remedies.

The interactions between species and the dependency of one species on another are also often not understood. Many species also confer direct benefits, whether medical, aesthetic, or cultural. They are part of a country’s national culture. The health and well-being aspects of nature are also extremely important.”

All of these factors were important in the debates at the Montreal conference.

In our post on What it can mean to lose a species, we gave the example of the Horseshoe Crab.

On the Eastern seaboard of America, at certain phases of the moon, a species of Horseshoe Crab ancient enough to appear in the fossil record comes ashore in vast numbers to lay its eggs in the sand of the beaches. Their movements are shadowed by huge flocks of coastal wading birds, that depend on the rich crab eggs to fatten up before being able to continue their migration between Tierra del Fuego and the Arctic. So already you have another species depending upon this one.

The crabs are also harvested, on an industrial scale, by biotech companies, which draw off their unique blue blood. This blood coagulates in the presence of bacteria, and the biotech companies use it to make essential and life-saving marker tests for endotoxin contamination in a huge range of surgical procedures in hospitals. Two critical dependencies on one species, that was until recently just carelessly cut up for bait, must make you wonder what potential is lost when disappearing rainforests or industrially overfished oceans decimate more of our planet’s biodiversity.

We and some of the contributors to our series of articles on Biodiversity have argued for closer convergence between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It is increasingly clear that these are different aspects of the same crisis. The Royal Society has pointed out that direct examples of climate change impacts on Biodiversity include the recent Australian bush fires, and damage to coral reefs, which may not survive a lengthy exceedance of 1.5oC warming, and this alone would have untold consequences for fish and other species dependent on the reefs.

Others, including Dr Richard Benwell CEO of Wildlife & Countryside Link have argued in a guest blog for this website that some of the machinery of the climate convention should be imported into the Convention on Biodiversity.

The world recently recorded its first extinction of a mammal, the Bramble Cay Melomys, which is directly attributable to climate change, in that the Australian island where it lived has been eroded and then inundated.

This is the background to the intensive negotiations over several years that have led to this week’s Global Biodiversity Framework.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

The Framework declares that –

“Biodiversity is fundamental to human well-being and a healthy planet, and economic prosperity for all people, including for living well in balance and in harmony with Mother Earth, we depend on it for food, medicines, energy, clean air and water, security from natural disasters and cultural inspiration, and it supports all systems of life on earth.”

Yet it recognises the critical threats to biodiversity summarised in particular in the IPBES report of 2019 on the Global Biodiversity Outlook, quoted above, and its estimate of a million species at risk of extinction.

The Framework aims to:

“catalyze, enable and galvanize urgent and transformative action by Governments, subnational and local governments and with the involvement of all of society, to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.”

The rights, involvement, knowledge and participation of indigenous peoples are heavily emphasised throughout.

“This is a framework for all – for the whole of government and the whole of society. Its success requires political will and recognition at the highest level of government and relies on action and cooperation by all levels of government and by all actors of society.”

There is strong emphasis on human rights, intergenerational equity, participation by youth, women and girls, and embracing formal and informal education.

“The vision of the Framework is a world living in harmony with nature where :”By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”.

“The mission of the Framework for the period up to 2030, towards the 2050 vision is:
To take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery for the benefit of people and planet by conserving and sustainably using biodiversity , and ensuring the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources, while providing the necessary means of implementation.”

The four long-term goals for 2050 for the Framework are:

GOAL A

The integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050;

Human induced extinction of known threatened species is halted, and, by 2050, extinction rate and risk of all species are reduced tenfold and the abundance of native wild species is increased to healthy and resilient levels;

The genetic diversity within populations of wild and domesticated species, is maintained, safeguarding their adaptive potential.

GOAL B

Biodiversity is sustainably used and managed and nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, are valued, maintained and enhanced, with those currently in decline being restored, supporting the achievement of sustainable development for the benefit of present and future generations by 2050.

GOAL C

The monetary and non-monetary benefits from the utilization of genetic resources, and digital sequence information on genetic resources, and of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, as applicable, are shared fairly and equitably, including, as appropriate with indigenous peoples and local communities, and substantially increased by 2050, while ensuring traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is appropriately protected, thereby contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, in accordance with internationally agreed access and benefit-sharing instruments.

GOAL D

Adequate means of implementation, including financial resources, capacity-building, technical and scientific cooperation, and access to and transfer of technology to fully implement the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework are secured and equitably accessible to all Parties, especially developing countries, in particular the least developed countries and small island developing States, as well as countries with economies in transition, progressively closing the biodiversity finance gap of 700 billion dollars per year, and aligning financial flows with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity.

These goals are then backed up by 23 action-oriented global targets for urgent action, to be initiated immediately, and completed by 2030. The specific nature of these targets should make them easier to track and monitor than their unsuccessful predecessors from the COP at Aichi in Japan. The following are indicative summaries only. The targets cover –

Target 1 Biodiversity areas to be managed so as to bring losses of areas of high ecological integrity close to zero by 2030.

Target 2 By 2030, at least 30% of areas of degraded terrestrial, inland water and coastal and marine ecosystems are under effective restoration.

Target 3 Conservation of 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas especially areas of importance for biodiversity.

Target 4 Urgent action to halt human induced extinctions of threatened species and recovery and conservation of species.

Target 5 Safe and legal harvesting and trade of wild species.

Target 6 Eliminate or reduce impacts of invasive alien species on biodiversity.

Target 7 Reduce pollution risks and negative impact of pollution from all sources by 2030 to levels that are not harmful to biodiversity, including reducing excess nutrients by at least half, and reducing the risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half.

Target 8 Minimise the impact of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity.

Target 9 Management and use of wild species to be sustainable, to benefit people dependent on biodiversity.

Target 10 Areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry managed sustainably to benefit biodiversity.

Target 11 Restore, maintain and enhance ecosystem services, such as air, water, climate, soil health, pollination and reduction of disease risk.

Target 12 Increase green and blue spaces in urban and densely populated areas, promoting biodiversity and human well-being.

Target 13 Legal, policy administrative and capacity-building measures to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources, as well as traditional knowledge.

Target 14 Integration of biodiversity into all policy areas, policies planning, regulations and development.

Target 15 Legal, administrative or policy measures to encourage business, especially large and transnational companies and financial institutions to monitor, assess and disclose risks dependencies and impacts on biodiversity, provide information to consumers and report on compliance.

Target 16 Promotion of sustainable consumption choices.

Target 17 Strengthening capacity for biosafety and handling biotechnology.

Target 18 Identify by 2025 and eliminate, phase out or reform incentives and subsidies harmful to biodiversity, reducing them by US$500 billion per year by 2030.

Target 19 Increase level of financial resources to implement national biodiversity strategies, by 2030 mobilising $200 billion per year, with contributions from developed countries and voluntarily assumed obligations from others, to $20 billion per year by 2025 and $30 billion per year from 2030.

Target 20 Capacity building and technology transfer.

Target 21 Access to best available data, information and knowledge.

Target 22 Inclusive and gender-responsive participation in decision taking , participation by indigenous peoples, women and girls, children and youth, persons with disabilities, and ensuring full protection of environmental human rights defenders.

Target 23 Women and girls to have equal opportunities and capacity to contribute to the objectives of the Convention.

Summary

This is a Global Biodiversity Framework of lofty aims and high ambitions, but one which most of our governments have now signed up to. For some and in some areas, it will not go far enough. For others it sets high Goals and Targets and poses an immediate challenge to the status quo and national governments’ current ways of doing business. The immediate challenge is of political will and national implementation, and environmental groups and climate and biodiversity activists need to take those questions to their own governments – not once, but relentlessly.

The UK has been one of the leading exponents of this ambitious approach, and generally has been one of the leading advocates for a high level of ambition in tackling biodiversity loss. To its credit, the UK put Nature front and centre as one of the main themes to be addressed when it hosted the COP26 climate talks. It sent a strong delegation to the Montreal talks, led by Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Therese Coffey, who has described these as “the most important talks of the year”.

As is now customary, the UK’s blind spot is in deficiencies and risks to its domestic implementation of laws and regulations.

In part because of its early adoption of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, the UK has become the most species-depleted country in the whole G7. 70,000 known species of animals, plants, funghi, microorganisms are declining. Farmland and woodland birds, insects and pollinators are in decline, 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost and 10,000 spare kilometres of wetlands have been drained.

Yet the UK government, of which Therese Coffey is a minister, has just set only the most minimal environmental targets that they were obliged to set by their own Environment Act 2021, and these have been roundly criticised for ignoring river health and habitat protection. And the same government threatens by means of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill the continued existence of some 1,100 environmental laws, including fundamentally important provisions such as the Habitats Directive and pesticide controls. Most recently they have given the go-ahead for the construction of the first coal mine for decades, only months after hosting COP26 and calling for the end of coal, co-founding the Powering Past Coal Alliance, and helping to persuade 500 businesses to sign up to the “Race to Zero”.

This all needs to change to be consistent with the UK’s new minted obligations under the Global Biodiversity Framework. All political parties need to commit to new legislation to deliver the Framework’s obligations in full. Rather than wait for government, environmental groups should help produce draft legislation themselves, and have it available for willing Parliamentarians. The work starts here.