The Urgency of Transforming Biodiversity Governance
Publication year
Resource type
UNCCD Library
Material Type
news article
Biodiversity underpins many SDGs well beyond the scope of SDGs 14 and 15 that respectively address life below water and life on land.
The worldwide failure to address biodiversity loss has led to a growing consensus that fundamental, transformative changes are needed in order to reverse these trends.
A recently published open-access book aims to provide and further develop a governance perspective on achieving transformative change.
By Elsa Tsioumani, IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin and University of Trento, Italy, Marcel T. J. Kok, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers, Radboud University, Netherlands
Biodiversity loss continues unabated. Despite an array of international law and policy instruments, past and ongoing governance efforts have not been effectively supporting the conservation and sustainable and equitable use of biodiversity.
Biodiversity underpins many SDGs well beyond the scope of SDGs 14 and 15 that respectively address life below water and life on land. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems provide the essential resources and ecosystem functions that directly support a range of societal sectors and economic activities, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and tourism. They contribute to climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk reduction (DRR). They mitigate air, water, and soil pollution. They underpin water supplies. They are also increasingly linked to good health and well-being.
The worldwide failure to address biodiversity loss has led to a growing consensus that fundamental, transformative changes are needed in order to reverse these trends. The need for transformative change has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in its 2019 Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and is being addressed in the current negotiations for a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to replace the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which were not achieved. Just last week, the negotiations on the preparation of a clean text for the GBF, to be concluded in December at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the CBD in Montreal, Canada, under the presidency of China, saw painstakingly little progress. This raises the question whether the GBF will indeed be able to catalyze, enable, and galvanize urgent and transformative action for biodiversity.
READ further from the links above
The worldwide failure to address biodiversity loss has led to a growing consensus that fundamental, transformative changes are needed in order to reverse these trends.
A recently published open-access book aims to provide and further develop a governance perspective on achieving transformative change.
By Elsa Tsioumani, IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin and University of Trento, Italy, Marcel T. J. Kok, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers, Radboud University, Netherlands
Biodiversity loss continues unabated. Despite an array of international law and policy instruments, past and ongoing governance efforts have not been effectively supporting the conservation and sustainable and equitable use of biodiversity.
Biodiversity underpins many SDGs well beyond the scope of SDGs 14 and 15 that respectively address life below water and life on land. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems provide the essential resources and ecosystem functions that directly support a range of societal sectors and economic activities, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and tourism. They contribute to climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk reduction (DRR). They mitigate air, water, and soil pollution. They underpin water supplies. They are also increasingly linked to good health and well-being.
The worldwide failure to address biodiversity loss has led to a growing consensus that fundamental, transformative changes are needed in order to reverse these trends. The need for transformative change has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in its 2019 Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and is being addressed in the current negotiations for a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to replace the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which were not achieved. Just last week, the negotiations on the preparation of a clean text for the GBF, to be concluded in December at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the CBD in Montreal, Canada, under the presidency of China, saw painstakingly little progress. This raises the question whether the GBF will indeed be able to catalyze, enable, and galvanize urgent and transformative action for biodiversity.
READ further from the links above
Keywords
biodiversity
governance
SDGs targets