The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
To meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity, researchers have proposed five strategies for protecting the global ecosystem.
Responding to calls to rethink the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the world’s blueprint for the next decade of biodiversity conservation and management, researchers at the China Programme of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the Kunming Institute of Botany have published a new paper describing five transformative changes to stabilize and then reverse critical biodiversity losses. They advocate for inclusion of these five steps in plans developed at the upcoming Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the CBD to be held in Kunming, China in 2021. Bioscience under the title, ‘Five steps to inject transformative change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework,’ posits a radical new path forward for reversing the accelerating loss of biodiversity and strengthening our capacity to protect nature.
The failure of signatory parties to the CBD to meet targets has severely arrested progress on biodiversity, argue the researchers, R. Edward Grumbine and Jianchu Xu.
‘Traditional modes of thinking about biodiversity cannot extricate us from our planetary bind,’ said Grumbine, lead author and researcher at the ICRAF China Programme. ‘Injecting transformative changes into the new global biodiversity framework will allow us to move away from seeing biodiversity protection as for nature and against people. Instead, we need to support the common good in which conservation, development, justice and equity are interwoven.’
Their proposed changes explicitly target social and financial systems with the twin goals of stabilizing biodiversity losses by 2030 and supporting recovery by 2050. To meet the enormity of the challenge, conservation scientists and practitioners are urged to embrace social change outside their traditional fields of expertise.
‘Transdisciplinary teams must include experts from biophysical, social and political disciplines as well as include representatives from multi development banks, private enterprises and Indigenous peoples,’ said Xu, second author of the article, coordinator of the ICRAF China programme and a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany.
The authors expect that the five transformative steps will be a focus of discussions at the CBD meeting in Kunming in the latter half of 2021.
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Prioritize biodiversity work that can strengthen societal transitions.
This means supporting innovations that link people with nature, working across research fields to stimulate the creation of new knowledge and setting priorities for projects to discover what works best.
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Address climate change across all biodiversity goals.
This means focusing on agriculture to make food production and consumption more sustainable and creating national dietary guidelines that encourage people to eat in an environmentally conscious fashion.
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Integrate land and sea protection to embrace both ‘protected’ areas and surrounding ‘unprotected’ lands.
This means linking legally protected areas with surrounding lands to build conservation networks that can sustain people and nature in connected landscapes.
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Incorporate biodiversity into mainstream environmental planning.
This means implementing eco-friendly laws and regulations, sharpening national biodiversity strategies and using these tools to plan new infrastructure projects.
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Increase funding to pay for all these steps.
This means funding increasing to levels 6–7 times greater than the present, removing negative subsidies detrimental to nature and building public-private partnerships to generate funds.
Response to the pandemic
At the same time, the catastrophic disruption wrought by COVID-19 on the global community invites conservationists and partners to generate new biodiversity strategies for ushering in sustainable outcomes for both people and nature.
In ecological circles, it is widely known that closer contact with wildlife increases the risk for pathogen transmission, a typical by-product of frontier development, particularly at the rural-urban divide. Deforestation generally leads to decreased biodiversity, but species known to host diseases that can spread to humans tend to flourish in the new ‘humanized’ landscapes, acting as potential reservoirs for future outbreaks. The pandemic highlights the deep link between human wellbeing and biodiversity conservation for a healthy planet.
The authors acknowledge difficulties inherent in introducing new policies to the CBD Secretariat, given that it is a UN body relying upon the voluntary compliance of its 196 signatory nations. ‘The CBD must simultaneously grapple with competing interests, unequal power relationships and institutional inertia,’ said Grumbine. These and other blocks have stymied the successful implementation of global biodiversity law for decades.
The authors nonetheless remain optimistic.
‘Emergent change is usually incremental, but with COVID-19, a real window has opened up,’ said Grumbine. ‘It is now up to us to revitalise the Convention by injecting transformative solutions into the discussion. A retooled CBD has considerable potential to deliver on-the-ground solutions, reframing the conversation and functioning as an institutional role model for collaborative mechanisms of governance.’
Given the unique timing of redrawing the post-2020 biodiversity framework coinciding with a global pandemic, the Kunming meeting in 2021 is of critical significance. Transformative changes will allow us to meet the challenges of the decade ahead. The stakes have never been higher.
Read the journal article
Grumbine RE, Xu JC. 2021. Five steps to inject transformative change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. BioScience. DOI:10.1093/biosci/biab013.
Additional coverage
Transformative Solutions to Protect the Planet's Biodiversity - Chinese Academy of Sciences
Transformative Solutions to Protect the Planet's Biodiversity - Kunming Institute of Botany
World Agroforestry (ICRAF) is a centre of scientific and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. Knowledge produced by ICRAF enables governments, development agencies and farmers to utilize the power of trees to make farming and livelihoods more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at multiple scales. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. We thank all donors who support research in development through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.