Updated goals and targets have been published by the Convention on Biological Diversity, but campaigners are concerned they do not go far enough. Campaigners following UN negotiations towards a global deal to protect nature are concerned that updated proposals contain the same flaws as the failed Aichi biodiversity targets they seek to replace.

The negotiations, under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), are drawing up a new international framework to stem the loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems, which scientists have warned is accelerating, and causing a sixth mass extinction.

The whole process has been delayed by the pandemic, including the final meeting to agree a deal, known as COP15, which was originally scheduled to take place this October in Kunming, China, but has now been postponed. Online events were held recently to update stakeholders, and to share several new documents, including a revision of the goals and targets outlined in January’s “zero draft”.

Land development, and degradation

A goal to increase protected areas on land and sea from the Aichi target of 17% to at least 30% remains in the text. “The target reflects the best and overwhelming science, and it’s really positive to see it included,” says Michael Degnan, deputy director at the Campaign for Nature.

However, a reference in one of the zero draft targets to achieving a “net increase in area, connectivity and integrity” has been removed, which Linda Krueger, senior policy advisor at The Nature Conservancy, says is a “big disappointment”.

The inclusion of this element was vital to tackle the loss of habitat from development, one of the biggest causes of biodiversity loss, she says. “You absolutely need some explicit goal that society is going to address this, because so many ecosystem types have already experienced high rates of development,” she says.

If the loss of land to development is not dealt with, natural ecosystems will continue to degrade and shrink, even if protected areas were expanded, because the protected areas would merely move the development elsewhere, she says. This could be the transformative element of the deal, but it is missing, she adds.
Human health, an afterthought?

The new text has also added human health, in relation to ensuring that trade and use of wild species of fauna and flora is legal, at sustainable levels, and safe for both human health and biodiversity.

But this has not impressed campaigners. “The CBD is the best process to directly respond to the current public health crisis because it very likely originated in the lack of balance in nature, and the CBD has a role to restore that,” says Li Shuo, senior global policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia.

“But I don’t think people have figured out how to land the opportunities presented by Covid-19 to the Kunming negotiations, which would enable the CBD to demonstrate that the global community has made a difference in preventing zoonotic disease,” he says.

Krueger adds: “They’ve sprinkled the word ‘health’ in a few parts, but I’m not sure there’s anything that would be compelling enough to drive the biodiversity agenda.” Read the whole article from the link above