The Paris climate agreement in December 2015 was the largest number of world leaders ever to attend a United Nations climate-change conference in a single day
Protecting and conserving habitats is central to saving species. This idea is in the framework of negotiations at COP15. The draft includes the goal of conserving at least 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030. But for protections to be most effective, they must include regions that are rich in biodiversity, such as tropical forests, Pimm says. Despite an increase in protected areas worldwide over the past ten years, species numbers have still declined, because these safeguards were not in the right places, studies show6.
The Paris climate agreement, signed in December 2015, ranks as one of the most momentous global treaties ever negotiated, setting a crucial goal to seek to limit warming to 1.5–2 °C above pre-industrial levels. At the time, the opening ceremony of the COP21 climate-change conference that led to the agreement also held the record for the largest number of world leaders ever to attend a United Nations event in a single day — more than 150. The two things are probably more than coincidence.
There is a better knowledge of how pollution and habitat destruction threaten the health of ecosystems in which we depend for food, clean water and disease prevention, as well as a better understanding of nature’s crucial role in offsetting climate change. Mangrove forests, for instance, are hugely effective in stopping influxes of seawater from tsunamis and sea-level rise.
Climate Negotiations are Still Not Going To Paris, and Biodiversity is Going Too: How Brazilian President Timing will Face the Threat of a Second World War
But when it comes to getting stalled negotiations motoring again, the scale of support by world leaders that was a feature of climate’s road to Paris is currently lacking.
Naeem is sure that advocates and scientists will push for a deal. “There would be real change” if countries were able to achieve a universal decrease in biodiversity loss, he says.
A second sticking point is how to share benefits of genetic data collected from plants, animals and other organisms. Communities in biodiversity-rich regions where genetic material is collected have little control over the commercialization of the data, and no way to recoup financial or other benefits. A fund devoted to bio-diversity could provide a simple way for LMICs to share benefits of the data and show how important it is for their survival.
Another reason to hope for a breakthrough is the forthcoming change in Brazil’s leadership. Conservation organizations such as the wildlife charity WWF have accused the world’s most biodiverse nation of deliberately obstructing previous negotiations, holding up agreement on targets such as protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. One of the top priorities of the incoming president of Brazil is the environment. Although he does not take over until January 2023, he is thought to be sending an interim team of negotiators to Montreal.
Time is running out. “We’re driving species to extinction at a rate about 1,000 times faster than they are created through evolution,” says Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and head of Saving Nature, a non-profit conservation organization.
Among the most at-risk groups are amphibians and reef-forming corals. The critically rare bleeding toad (Leptophryne cruentata) lives in Mount Gede Pangrango National Park in Java, and it is one of the 40% that are threatened with extinction.
These toads were thought to be extinct until the year 2000, when some were spotted by a team led by Mirza Kusrini, a herpetologist at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia. The researchers found that the Amphibians were stricken with the chytrid fungus, which has decimated amphibian populations. Kusrini says that climate change is probably making life hard for the tiny toad, which got its common name from the crimson, splatter-like spots covering its body. Warm weather can shift the timing of certain behaviors, such as toads breeding season, making the toads vulnerable.
Global warming, which has been raising sea temperatures, is also responsible for harming coral reefs around the globe (see ‘Threat assessment’). Over a period of 9 years, up to 2018, 14% of the world’s coral died out — a massive problem, because today, coral reefs support one-quarter of all marine species.
How diverse are the ecosystems that we depend on to survive in a crisis? Shahid Naeem, an ecologist at Columbia University, New York City, explains what science tells
It’s difficult to predict, because doing so requires knowledge of which species are present in a particular ecosystem, such as a rainforest, and what functions they have, says Shahid Naeem, an ecologist at Columbia University in New York City. Much of that information is often unknown. However, scientists have shown3 that ecosystems with less biodiversity are not as good at capturing and converting resources into biomass, such as happens when plants capture nutrients or sunlight used for growth.
They are both good at decomposing and recycling. For example, studies show that dead organisms are broken down, and their nutrients recycled, more quickly when a high variety of plant litter covers the forest floor4. Less diverse systems are less resilient than more diverse ones, which can be a problem if there is a fire.
It won’t be very robust if we lose parts of our system. “The science behind that is rock solid.”
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04370-4
A Global Framework for Lands, Oceans and Biodiversity, and the COP15 Conference on Ecology (with Supplementary Report)
Clean water can sometimes prevent diseases from spreading to humans. The services get worse when species are lost. For example, most amphibians eat insects, many of which are considered pests, such as cockroaches, termites and mosquitoes. There have been studies showing a rise in the cases of Malaria in areas in Central America where the amphibian populations have collapsed. “You know when they disappear”, Kusrini says, because insect numbers rise and people start using more pesticides to kill them.
Eradicating invasive species is another important conservation strategy, and the framework’s draft currently calls for cutting the introduction of such species in half. Some estimates suggest that invasive predators, such as cats and rats, are responsible for more than half of all extinctions of birds, mammals and reptiles7.
It’s important that nations agree on a framework with at least some quantifiable targets, so that progress can be measured, and so that countries can be held accountable if they fail to meet their targets, researchers say. “I’m afraid what will happen is, they will produce a long list of ‘waffle’,” Pimm says. “We need quantification.”
The most significant effort to protect world’s lands, oceans and biodiversity will be made by the negotiators at the U.N. biodiversity conference.
The United Nations conference on ecology, orCOP15, is set to end a day before the global framework. The new draft released by China gave the sometimes contentious talks a boost.
The most significant part of the agreement is a commitment to protect 30% of land and water considered important for biodiversity by 2030. In the case of marine areas, 10% of them are protected.
The draft also calls for raising $200 billion by 2030 for biodiversity from a range of sources and working to phase out or reform subsidies that could provide another $500 billion for nature. As part of the financing package, the framework calls for increasing to at least $20 billion annually by 2025 the money that goes to poor countries — or about double what is currently provided. That number would increase to $30 billion each year by 2030.
Some advocates wanted tougher language around subsidies that make food and fuel so cheap in many parts of the world. Identifying subsidies that can be reformed or phased out by the year 25 is what the document calls for.
Andrew Deutz is the director of global policy, institutions and finance for The Nature Conservancy. “It contains some signals on finance, but it fails to advance past the goals of a decade ago in terms of addressing drivers of biodiversity loss in sectors like agriculture, fisheries, and infrastructure.”
Delegates in the Senate are frustrated by the lack of funding for resolving the economic problems of the day after the Johannesburg Roundtable on Migration and Natural Resources
The financing has been among the most contentions issues, with delegates from 70 African, South American and Asian countries walking out of negotiations Wednesday. They came back several hours later.
A new funding mechanism for biodiversity should be established and developed countries should provide at least $100 billion annually for emerging economies until 2030 according to a statement from Brazil.
“All the elements are in there for a balance of unhappiness which is the secret to achieving agreement in U.N. bodies,” Pierre du Plessis, a negotiator from Namibia who is helping coordinate the African group, told The Associated Press. “Everyone got a bit of what they wanted, not necessarily everything they wanted. Let’s see if there is a spirit of unity.
Others praised the fact the document recognizes the rights of Indigenous communities. In past biodiversity documents, indigenous rights were often ignored and they rarely were part of the larger discussions other than a reference to their traditional knowledge. The framework will make sure that the rights of the Indigenous peoples are upheld.
The draft puts off a goal of stopping the extinction of species until 2050, which is concerned by the Wildlife Conservancy and other environmental groups. They are afraid that ambitions are not enough.