In time for Christmas, one of the most historic inter-governmental landmark decisions hit the headlines: 200 countries had agreed at COP15 in Vancouver, that:
“By 2030: Protect 30% of Earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas, inland waters; Reduce by $500 billion annual harmful government subsidies; Cut food waste in half.”
Source: Press release of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD)
This agreement is to Biodiversity what for Climate was the 2015 Paris Agreement for Climate (sidenote: which at the time was agreed upon ‘only’ by 194 parties …).
And yes, the challenges related to the Paris Agreement remain immense. Not only are those agreements not legally binding, just sort of a voluntary ‘I will’ pledge. But governmental inaction is a ‘thing’, as the stupid statement by France’s president Manuel Macron at the occasion of his 2022/3 new year speech (“Who could have predicted the climate crisis?”) in order to justify it, proves. [context in English here and here; and here in French]. Really?! It’s only the 6th IPCC report since 1990 that came out in 2021/2 … But aaaaaanyway …
In a sense, the extent and relatively aspirational level of the agreement comes as a little bit of a surprise for a few reasons, of which the following come to my mind immediately:
- Due to Covid19, COP15 was postponed, drawn out, split up and relocated a couple of times. Part 2 should have taken place in Kunming sometime in early 2022, and was eventually only held in Vancouver in December 2022.
- Biodiversity, and any thresholds or measures thereof, are much harder to measure in terms of impact. The geography of cause and effect are typically disjoint, impacts become visible only at very local scale, and measures vary widely by local preconditions and attributes.
Carbon measurement, remediation and adaption is a breakfast menu in comparison. - Indigenous communities were much more vocal from the start. Which also means that issues around social justice and fairness (often simply called ‘climate justice’ despite the term vastly falling short of its actual nuance and meaning) were made part of the agenda relatively early on, and hence made discussions justifiably more diverse, nuanced and complicated (in a good way!)
Very different from the Climate debate, where this came to the table late, as a consequence with a vengeance, and with ongoing debates around post-colonial remediation demands. - Money is being spoken about and so are constraints to be kept within …
This all said, and above and beyond the headlines: what exactly has been decided in the ‘Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’ (GBF)?
To start with, here a few key benchmarks: The GBF contains 4 key goals and 23 specified targets.
The 4 goals are:
Goal A (→ Focus: Stop more damage from happening)
- The integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050;
- Human induced extinction of known threatened species is halted, and, by 2050, extinction rate and risk of all species are reduced tenfold, and the abundance of native wild species is increased to healthy and resilient levels;
- The genetic diversity within populations of wild and domesticated species, is maintained, safeguarding their adaptive potential.
Goal B (→ Focus: Regenerate, i.e. improve the situation going forward)
- Biodiversity is sustainably used and managed and nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, are valued, maintained and enhanced, with those currently in decline being restored, supporting the achievement of sustainable development, for the benefit of present and future generations by 2050.
Goal C (→ Focus: indigenous and local communities need to be given their ‘fair share’ if business wants to exploit genetic resources stemming from nature and wild habitats in particular)
- The monetary and non-monetary benefits from the utilization of genetic resources, and digital sequence information on genetic resources, and of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, as applicable, are shared fairly and equitably, including, as appropriate with indigenous peoples and local communities, and substantially increased by 2050, while ensuring traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is appropriately protected, thereby contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, in accordance with internationally agreed access and benefit-sharing instruments.
Goal D (→ Focus: Financial means are made available to Global South countries so as to be able to implement the goals and targets)
- Adequate means of implementation, including financial resources, capacity-building, technical and scientific cooperation, and access to and transfer of technology to fully implement the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework are secured and equitably accessible to all Parties, especially developing countries, in particular the least developed countries and small island developing States, as well as countries with economies in transition, progressively closing the biodiversity finance gap of $700 billion per year, and aligning financial flows with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity.
The original list of the 23 Targets is rather quite long, and can be read in full here. Carbon Brief provides us with the following much slicker summary:
| Target | Description |
|---|---|
| ** 1 | Effective management of land- and sea-use change, loss of highly important biodiverse areas close to zero by 2030. |
| ** 2 | Effective restoration of 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 |
| ** 3 |
Effective conservation and management of 30% of land and 30% of
oceans by 2030 [Comment by the author: this target is also often referred to with the term ‘30x 30’] |
| 4 | Halt human-induced extinctions and maintain and restore genetic diversity |
| 5 | Sustainable use, harvesting and trade of wild species |
| ** 6 | Mitigate or eliminate the impacts of invasive alien species, reduce the rates of establishment of invasive species by 50% by 2030 |
| 7 | Reduce pollution risks and impacts from all sources by 2030, reduce the overall risk from pesticides by half. |
| 8 | Minimise the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity |
| 9 | Ensure sustainable use and management of wild species, while protecting customary use by Indigenous peoples |
| 10 | Sustainable management of areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry |
| 11 | Restore and enhance ecosystem function through nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches |
| 12 | Increase the area and quality of urban green and blue spaces |
| 13 | Fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources |
| 14 | Integration of biodiversity into policies and development across all sectors |
| 15 | Enable businesses to monitor, assess and disclose their impacts on biodiversity |
| **16 | Encourage sustainable consumption, including by reducing food waste by half by 2030 |
| 17 | Strengthen capacity for biosafety measures and ensure benefits-sharing from biotechnology |
| **18 | Phase out or reform harmful subsidies in a just way, reducing them by $500bn by 2030 |
| **19 | Substantially increase financial resources, mobilise $200bn per year by 2030 from all sources, including $30bn from developed to developing countries |
| 20 | Strengthen capacity-building and technology transfer |
| 21 | Integrated and participatory management, including the use of traditional knowledge |
| 22 | Equitable representation and participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities |
| 23 | Ensure gender equality in the implementation of the framework |
Table 1: The 23 targets of the ‘Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’ (GBF) as summarised by Carbon Brief.
**: Those targets that contain concrete numeric benchmark measures of some kind.
Targets are nice, but they obviously only are worth their salt if they are stringent enough. And being followed.
So: Let’s look at some of the key measures … hence, those targets where there are mentioned some concrete numbers to benchmark progress against. And think about how stringent they in reality are, and what therefore we can, or not, in terms of concrete actions from different countries around the world.
- Insight – General:
‘Only’ 7 of the 23 targets contain concrete numeric target measures. In a sense, these hence are the key achievements of the agreement. The relevant targets are: 1, 2, 3, 6, 16, 18, 19. - Insight – Target 1:
Target 1 cites a target ‘close to zero’ for areas affected by land-sea-use-change in ‘highly important biodiverse areas’. ‘Close to zero’ is a bit vague for a target. Is 10% still close enough to zero? Or does it have to be ‘below 1%’?
Lack of specificity could annihilate the impact of and progress in regards to this target. - Insight – Target 2:
Target 2 mentions the restoration of 30% of degraded land and sea areas.
This raises 2 questions: 1) 30% relative to what baseline? And 2) what exactly means ‘degraded’ in this context? - Insight – Target 3:
Target 3 has been the most published and written about target of the whole collection, and is often abbreviated as ‘30 x 30’.
This is the one goal that has been directly compared to the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement. And it is no doubt as a very concrete threshold to measure against.
Only. The targets are subject to country-by-country pledges (50 at the beginning, 100 at the time of writing, for a target) … followed by concrete actions of implementation by each of the countries. And we have learned how scarce the latter tends to be. Notably in the Global North! - Insight – Target 6:
Reduce invasive species by 50%. Same question as for Target 2: 1) 50% relative to what baseline? And 2) what exactly means ‘invasive species’ in this context? - Insight – Target 16:
Reduce food waste by half. Same issue as for Target 2 and Target 6: 1) halfen relative to what (official) baseline? And 2) what exactly means ‘food waste’ in this context? - Insight – Target 18:
Reform harmful subsidies in a just way and reduce them by 500bn USD. Same issue as for Target 2, Target 6, and Target 16: 1) reduce relative to what (official?) baseline? And 2) what exactly means ‘harmful subsidies’ or ‘just way’ in this context? To complement 3) ‘reform’ with what measurable impact? - Insight – Target 19:
This is where the rubber hits the road in a different way. For one: multiple proposals have been rejected to create a dedicated fund for such financing. And: Some high-end politicians do not feel that it is the role of the Global North to contribute (→ Marcron’s letter to the EU’s commission president that such a fund would mean ‘crossing the red line’.) Finally: increasingly Global South countries use their natural resources to generate badly needed ForEx … as the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo shows. Why? Because they do not have much alternatives, and Global North companies are happy to splash out cash.
Hence, while the recipients here are mentioned (to some extent) the origin of the money is not identified quite as clearly – which invariably is already leading to quarrels.
With all of the above said, the interesting piece is once again the enforcement and implementation mechanisms of this agreement. Given that all up to this point are in essence pledges, that countries may officially sign up to but still potentially choose to ignore, remain inactive on, or indeed choose to kick the can down the road. As the Paris Agreement, case in point, shows.
And that, is the focus of the next article in this series.
