Be of Good Cheer. The Global Biodiversity Framework is Here.

It felt like Christmas came a week early this year. To start with, Argentina won the World Cup. It was an epic game, and as a long time Messi fan I felt simply luminous in the following days. After the game, I opened the news to find that the January 6th commission was recommending criminal charges be brought against Trump for his leadership in the insurrection. Color me pink. Either of these would have been enough to make my Christmas complete, but the best was yet to come. On December 19th, almost 200 parties signed a new, far reaching, far sighted, conservation agreement. The headline target of this agreement, called the Global Biodiversity Framework, is a commitment to protect 30% of the planet for wildlife by 2030. 30 by 30, or 30x30, it’s been nicknamed. 30% is estimated to be the minimum amount of fully functional biosphere that we need in order to stabilize the climate and ensure wildlife, including humans, continues to exist. Amongst many others, I’ve long called for 30%, or more, of nature to be protected, but never dreamt it would actually happen.

Why is this such a big deal? Because the state of the natural world is alarming, at best, and terrifying, at worse. Insect numbers have plummeted at seemingly pristine nature reserves around the world. Frog species have gone extinct at disturbing rates. Coral reefs are dying off. Rainforests continue to be slashed and burned. The Sahara is expanding. Polar ice caps are melting. The World Wildlife Fund estimates there are fully 69% fewer wild animals than there were in 1970. That’s really disturbing. A new study predicts that without changes to our behaviors, one in ten species may go extinct by the end of the century. Extinction rates today are already 10-100 times greater than ever seen in the geological record, leading experts to call the modern era the sixth mass extinction event.

This is a moral calamity, to my mind. Who are we to wipe out populations, ecosystems, entire species? But it doesn’t motivate everyone. Indeed, even the fact that biodiversity loss affects the poor and marginalized far more than the wealthy doesn’t motivate everyone. But biodiversity losses do motivate the vast majority of us when we recognize that a healthy biosphere keeps humans alive. And not just alive, but healthy. The biosphere cleans water and air by filtering out pollutants, it provides us with nearly all our food and fibers, gives us many of our medicines, and regulates the climate, among many other things. The bottom line is if we don’t reverse the destruction of nature, humans will not survive.

To get a sense of the magnitude of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), lets consider what was in place previously. The original Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was opened for signatures in 1992. It was the first international agreement, eventually signed by 195 countries and the EU, which acknowledged the value of biodiversity and the need to protect it on a global scale. The US signed the treaty but has been unable to ratify it because that requires 2/3 of the Senate to approve it. Ratification has been blocked by the Republican Party. Although the US independently aims to meet the 30x30 target, the Republican Senators’ unwillingness to ratify the CBD has dramatically weakened the impact of the agreement which the rest of the world has seen fit to ratify. Tragically, arguments against ratification - loss of US sovereignty and fear of financial commitments - are without basis in reality for the CBD isn’t actually binding. The failure to ratify the CBD, and more recently the GBF, is a blot on the soul of the US.

None the less, most of the rest of the world has ratified the CBD treaty. And as the years have passed, the treaty has gotten stronger as amendments and new frameworks were added. The original CBD didn’t have specific targets rather it set out principles - like protecting biodiversity and sharing the benefits of genetic resources. Perhaps the most prominent of the CBD amendments, until now, were the Aichi Targets. The Aichi Targets to be reached by the year 2020 included: eliminating subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity, incorporating biodiversity values in national and local policies of development, encouraging governments and business to take steps to achieve sustainable production and consumption, and halving habitat loss. It also included a goal of protecting 17% of terrestrial land and inland water and 10% of coastal waters and marine areas. Like most international treaties on environmental issues, the Aichi Targets were not binding, and most nations did not met their targets. But it is not all glum, conservation efforts have expanded in the last few of decades. Temperate forests’ acreage has been expanding since the 1990s and the loss of tropical forests has slowed. But unfortunately, the destruction of the natural world far outpaces conservation efforts and we continue to loss 47,000 kilometers squared of forest every year. This is a decrease of about 10% less forest loss relative to the previous decade - that’s the right direction but not the 50% reduction in habitat loss called for in the Aichi Targets.

One of the main reasons for the failure to reach the Aichi Targets is thought to have been the lack of monitoring and reporting on each nation’s progress towards their goals. Here is one area where the GBF really shines: it outlines a framework, with mechanisms for planning, monitoring, reporting, reviewing, transparency, and capacity building. Each signatory to the convention is asked to provide not just targets for conservation, but strategic plans, and to report on their progress in a transparent and regular fashion. This is a big step forward as we’ve seen with the comparable evolution in national carbon emission reporting under the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C. Indeed, the authors of the GBF have said that the climate talks offered them many lessons.

In addition to calls for increased accountability, the GBF also calls for increased sharing of technology, management strategies, and other infrastructure resources. Large and transnational companies are called to disclose risks, dependencies, and impacts on biodiversity, which proponents argue could be the start of a significant shift in business practices. Another target for 2030 is to ensure that 30% of degraded terrestrial land, inland water, and coastal and marine ecosystems are under effective restoration strategies. Other targets are to reduce the loss of high biodiversity areas to zero, to halt human induced extinctions, to restore genetic diversity, to eliminate or at least minimize invasive alien species, to reduce pollution and nutrient runoff, and to reduce the risk from pesticides - most with 2030 and 2050 quantitative targets.

How is this all to be funded? The Nature Conservancy estimates that it would cost about $700 billion a year to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. That’s a shed load of money no doubt and the commitments made by countries at the December meeting only reached $7 billion, with philanthropists and the private sector contributing another $1.3 billion. The GBF calls on governments to spend $200 billion per year, by 2030, to implement national biodiversity strategies and action plants. There is a further call for $30 billion per year for funding to developing nations, from developed nations, for their biodiversity strategies.

Lest you be discouraged at this point and think $700 billion a year, or indeed the GBF target of $200 billion is unattainable, know this. The net annual income from the world’s oil and gas produces is predicted to have double in 2022, to $4 trillion, that’s almost 6 times the $700 billion needed to … save us all. Of course, the $4 trillion is all income, the profit margin of the seven largest oil and gas companies, in the first nine months of 2022, was a mere $170 billion while the profit of the 40 leading mining companies in 2021 reach $159 billion. Since these are two of the most destructive industries, many are calling for a windfall tax on them to help plug the funding gap. Another massive chunk of money could be freed up by reconsidering the $1.8 trillion a year the world spends on subsiding industries that drive the annihilation of the natural world. The GBF frame calls for a progressive reduction in these destructive subsides by at least $500 billion a year by 2030. Why not shuffle the entire amount over to biodiversity protection? Undoubtedly it is more complicated than a mere redistribution, but I suspect that corporate pressures played a role in not making that a target.

And last but not least, the GBF calls ALL OF US to engage with the vision of “Humanity living in harmony with nature” by 2050. Not only are we important as consumers, but the GBF calls us all to respect many kinds of wisdom, with targets for inclusion of and decision making by women, the less wealthy, and generally the less represented. Everyone’s voice is to be heard. And this is not just lip-service. At the summit conference this December, at which the GBF was signed, a group of young indigenous people were admitted to stage a “die-in” in the conference room at the start of the negotiations. The protest resulted in an 11th hour change to the 30 x 30 target to include the phrase "recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities including over their traditional territories.” It literally brings tears to my eyes to think that a group of young people had such an impact. Of course, their protest merely crested the wave of the call to recognize indigenous peoples’ rights, building upon the work of many. But crest that wave they did.

All too often, previous calls to protect biodiversity have come at the expense of indigenous people’s rights. This is largely because indigenously managed lands are amongst the most biodiverse in all of the world, making these lands juicy targets for protected areas. While Indigenous folk make up just 5% of the global population, they protect an estimated 80% of the world’s biodiversity. And lands managed by indigenous peoples generally have lower deforestation rates than comparable protected lands, by as much as 50% less. If we try to meet the 30x30 target by throwing a protected status over indigenous peoples lands, indigenous folk are likely to loose the right to practice their ancient traditions in those lands. We would effectively be punishing them for their better stewardship. The recognition by the GBF that we cannot abuse native peoples to meet the 30x30 target has been welcomed by The International Indigenous Forum.

And what about reversing own personal contributions to biodiversity loss? One easy way, for those with the means, is to make donations to charities that establish and manage protected lands. But something we all can do - and dare I say some we all should do - is to spend our money in ways that protect biodiversity at home and abroad. How do we do that? The number one cause of biodiversity loss is habitat loss. This is driven primarily by people who do not live where the habitat destruction is ongoing - but rather by consumers that live far away. If you are a regular reader of this newsletter you will know what is coming next: most wilderness destruction is for livestock production. So the number one thing we can do combat the loss of biodiversity? Reduce our meat intake, reducing dairy is a close second. And the low hanging fruit here is to try to eliminate food waste - estimated to be close to 50% of food produced. We can also make a dramatic difference on the most local of levels by creating habitats for wildlife in our gardens and in our communities. Wildlife friendly gardening practices include not using pesticides, leaving the leaves, encouraging native plants, letting parts of your garden go wild, and connecting to other wild areas.

The recent progress made with the GBF feels very similar to the progress of the international climate talks. While all targets aren’t being met and the targets are too weak, each year sees a strengthening of targets and a crawling towards reaching those targets. We are seriously aiming for 1.5 degrees warming now, not the 4-6 degrees we were headed toward in recent decades. And we are now seriously aiming for 30% of land being protected. Both of these are science based limits to avoid dangerous changes to our biosphere. Wow. For the first time in my 40 years of environmental activism, I feel cautiously optimistic about the biodiversity crisis as well as the climate crisis. And this is the best of reasons to be of good cheer.