A future biodiversity protection strategy will be tasked with establishing 30% of protected areas worldwide by 2030, according to our partner The Conversation.
It will follow on from that of Nagoya (2010), the objective of which was to protect 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of marine and coastal areas.
This analysis was conducted by Didier Babin, biodiversity researcher;
Christian Leclerc, ethno-biologist;
Didier Bazile, researcher specializing in agrobiodiversity conservation, biodiversity project manager.
By the end of 2022, the final negotiations will be held in Kunming, in southern China, to establish the new global strategy for the protection of biodiversity by 2030. This decisive moment will bring together the various signatory governments of the Convention on biological diversity of the United Nations, i.e. 196 States Parties and the European Union.
Like the COPs for the climate, this meeting will examine the progress made, establish priorities and decide on work plans in a context where everyone recognizes that the degradation of ecosystems is largely attributable to human activities;
the scientific community and NGOs will strongly influence these negotiations.
The flagship measure of this new global strategy, formulated from 2020, concerns the establishment of 30%, or even 50%, of protected areas in the world, including if possible at least 10% of areas under so-called “strong” protection.
Return to the 2010 Nagoya conference
This new framework will follow on from the one adopted in Nagoya in 2010 and characterized by 20 so-called Aichi objectives, aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity by 2020.
The scientific and political observation of the Nagoya framework is clear: its implementation has been an almost total failure.
The only objective relatively achieved concerns the surface area of protected areas on a global scale: 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of marine and coastal areas.
Why was this goal, and only him, achieved?
Detail of the 20 Aichi Targets © United Nations (via The Conversation)
Protected areas at the top of the list
This objective was one of the most specific and measurable of the global framework adopted in Nagoya.
The nature conservation community, on the other hand, had already been well organized for years to be able to create and manage new protected areas.
This objective has benefited from a real "business model" in this area, linking different actors to ecological interests (separating nature from human pressures contributes to the preservation of biodiversity), policies (creating protected areas is an easily communicable political act) and financial (various organizations sustain a conservation economy ranging from donors to NGOs, including beneficiary administrations and the communities concerned).
For the period 2010-2020, it is not easy to know what part of the investment and what mobilization of the actors have been concentrated on this sole objective of increasing the surface area of protected areas.
But this effort was certainly much greater than that devoted to the other Aichi targets.
At least 30% of the land and 30% of the oceans
It is reasonable to believe that strictly protecting a part of the planet will preserve at least part of its biodiversity.
This vision is not universally shared, notably by indigenous peoples and local communities who very often reconcile biodiversity and agricultural production.
This vision is closely linked to the historic American approach to the protection of a wild nature under glass, as in the great parks of the American West... even if the United States of America is the only country not to to be a negotiator of the future global agreement, the United States and the Vatican not being signatory “parties” to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Map showing the distribution of protected areas worldwide. Currently, more than 22.5 million km² on land and 28 million km² in marine and coastal environments are protected today © protectedplanet.org CC BY-NC-ND (via The Conversation)
Let us recall the key objective of the current negotiations: to protect at least 30% of the land and at least 30% of the oceans by 2030. This goal has also become the main object of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and peoples, co-chaired by Costa Rica, France and the United Kingdom, and launched in Paris on January 11, 2021 during the One Planet Summit on biodiversity.
Focusing on protected areas… a false good idea?
Although the expansion of protected areas is an essential instrument of biodiversity protection policies, it has been proven that “high levels of ambition for the conservation and restoration of biodiversity […] cannot be achieved without transformative changes ".
Such changes are undoubtedly much more complex and difficult to deal with politically and economically than the creation of protected areas.
These are, according to IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) in its 2019 global assessment:
“of a fundamental system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values, necessary for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, the well- long-term human being and sustainable development”.
Well-identified degradation factors
The text under negotiation for this new global biodiversity framework, which should therefore be finalized in 2022, supports these transformative changes, while some States, on the contrary, show their interest in the
status quo
.
As in the previous framework, protected areas are far from being the only objective identified.
And the magnitude of the efforts and means to be implemented for all of these objectives is essential, since they are all interconnected.
However, mobilizing or financing mainly protected areas diverts the gaze from the essential challenges to be met.
The evolution scenarios proposed by the latest global biodiversity assessment thus show that if nature conservation and ecosystem restoration objectives are not combined with other concrete actions aimed at transformative change, current trends in degradation of biodiversity will continue.
Additional concrete actions must in particular target the five main direct drivers of degradation identified by IPBES in its 2019 global assessment: changes in land and sea use;
the direct exploitation of certain organisms;
climate change ;
Pollution ;
invasive alien species.
Transforming the global economic system
It is easy to understand that the next global biodiversity framework must also concern the 70% of unprotected areas.
The challenge lies in our ability to transform the economic system towards more sustainable production of goods and services, especially for foodstuffs;
to reduce consumption, waste and wastage;
to support the ecological transitions of agri-food systems and those of cities with greener infrastructures;
reducing pressures on freshwater ecosystems…
In a word, to mobilize energetically on the second objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity aimed at the “sustainable use” of biodiversity.
Assessments of the financial needs to implement this new global framework estimate that only around 20% of efforts should be devoted to protected areas.
The essential must therefore be invested in stopping and/or transforming unsustainable activities and practices, and not primarily in the direct conservation of nature.
Dare to invest in transformative change
The 2019 IPBES Global Assessment assessed that 80% of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals may not be met if biodiversity degradation continues.
Alongside diverging interests, there are also common interests that could make it possible to move towards a fairer and more sustainable trajectory.
The negotiators of the global framework for biodiversity are notably confronted with the question of subsidies – some 475 billion euros per year – aimed at supporting activities that are harmful to biodiversity in the agricultural, forestry or fisheries sectors.
These subsidies harmful to biodiversity highlight the incoherence of public policies and underline the need to go beyond sectoral approaches.
It is therefore urgent to stop and redirect these financial flows in order to support the transitions of currently problematic and unsustainable sectors of activity.
Our “BIODIVERSITY” dossier
Living together on Earth
The way humans behave gives the impression that they are at war with the planet and all other living species.
And, in a way, in the medium and long term, at war with themselves.
The political vision for 2050 of the new global framework for biodiversity is however that of… “living in harmony with nature”.
At a time when the international negotiations for biodiversity are finalizing, it is therefore urgent to focus just as much on this “remaining 70%”.
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This analysis was written by Didier Babin, researcher – Science-policy interface in biodiversity; Christian Leclerc, ethno-biologist; Didier Bazile, researcher specializing in the conservation of agrobiodiversity, in charge of the biodiversity mission (all three at CIRAD [Centre for international cooperation in agronomic research for development]).
The original article was published on The Conversation website.
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Declaration of interests
● Didier Babin is president of the MAB association (Man And the Biosphere) – France.
He is currently scientific advisor to the "Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU support" project.
● Didier Bazile is a member of the French Committee of the IPBES, of the French Committee of the IUCN and of the Scientific Council of the FRB.
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