George W. Bush Presidential Center

April 21, 2023

Up to 1 million species currently face extinction, many within decades.

If we want a future with sea turtles, monarch butterflies, joshua trees, whale sharks, orangutans, and lemurs, we must address the largest causes of biodiversity decline – loss of habitat on land and overexploitation of the oceans.  This will help mitigate the impacts of climate change; directly benefit people by providing essential ecosystem services such as clean air, food, water, and medicine; and reduce the increasing risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides.

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Reuters

October 25, 2022
There is a lot resting on the diminutive shoulders of Elizabeth Maruma Mrema. The Tanzanian lawyer, chief executive of the Convention on Biological Diversity, will be leading efforts to strike an historic agreement to protect nature at the COP15 biodiversity summit in Montreal in December.

As if that is not enough, she is also co-chair of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), with a goal of creating a framework for companies and investors to report on their nature-related risks: both the impact they have on nature, and their dependencies on nature to conduct their businesses.

Having only been appointed in 2021, she and her co-chair, former Refinitiv founder David Craig, are proceeding at warp speed, aiming to produce a workable version of the TNFD by September next year.

The timetable has been pushed to come just months after what is hoped to be a “Paris moment” for nature at COP15, a reference to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, with 196 countries signing off the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF).

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Eco-Business

August 12, 2022
Biodiversity encompasses the full variety of life – all genes, species and ecosystems – and it is in danger. That means we are too. As this article explains, a major conference in December 2022 could have a big impact on our collective fate by helping to end biodiversity loss and restore nature.

COP15 is shorthand for the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In fact, COP15 includes meetings of parties to three international agreements: the CBD and its two subsidiary protocols, namely the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit-sharing.

The CBD was agreed at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. It has three objectives: the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. Some 195 countries and the European Union are now parties to the CBD. The United States is the only member state of the United Nations that has not ratified the agreement. The CBD’s Cartagena Protocol has 173 parties and its Nagoya Protocol has 137.

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Science Daily

April 26, 2022
Until now, measures to protect climate and biodiversity have often been developed in parallel. However, this is now considered outdated because many approaches can protect both climate and biodiversity. Scientists have now assessed the role of the potential future global biodiversity targets (Post-2020 Action Targets for 2030) for climate protection and found that about two thirds of these targets can also help to slow climate change.

When the global community is expected to meet for the second part of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, in autumn, it must also adopt the next generation of UN biodiversity targets. These will then replace the Aichi Targets that were aimed for until 2020 -- and have hardly been achieved. 21 "Post-2020 Action Targets for 2030" have already been pre-formulated. While they still have to be finally agreed, they aim to reduce potential threats to biodiversity, improve the well-being of humans, and implement tools and solutions for the conservation of biodiversity.

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Modern Diplomacy

April 20, 2022
Big uncertainties hung over when the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity would be held. It had been rescheduled several times because of the pandemic. Now, it is expected to be held in August this year in the Chinese city of Kunming. The goal of COP15 is to create a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which would outline a roadmap for global action to maintain and protect biodiversity. After the round of preparatory talks in Geneva in April, parties decided to hold the next round of negotiations in Nairobi, from June 21 to 29, 2022, prior to the UN Convention. The meeting in Geneva resulted in the first agreed draft document for a post-2020 framework for nature, including goals, targets, and enabling mechanisms.

But there is still a long and stony road ahead. Despite the consensus on the main goals of the framework, disagreements are mainly regarding how to monitor the progress, finance for developing countries and divergence concerning specifics such as the reduction of nitrogen waste by 2030, among others. Leading policy makers have voiced concerns about the ambition of the GBF. As the EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius said: “At COP15, the international community will seek to agree on an ambitious global biodiversity framework with strong monitoring to measure progress on the ground in reversing nature loss. But we are not there yet, and we need to significantly narrow the gaps between Parties’ positions.”

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UN Environment Programme

April 14, 2022
Healthy, biodiverse ecosystems sustain life on Earth by providing air, water and other essential elements. From forests to farmlands to oceans, the planet’s ecosystems are the basis of resources, services and industries.

Despite the value nature provides, it is being degraded at catastrophic rates. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 75 percent of the Earth’s land and 66 percent of its oceans have been altered by human activity and many essential ecosystem services are eroding. The rate of global change in nature over the past 50 years is unprecedented in human history.

Nature loss has far-reaching consequences. Damaged ecosystems exacerbate climate change by releasing carbon instead of storing it. Rampant development is putting animals and humans in closer contact increasing the risk of diseases like COVID-19 to spread. A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report found that about 60 percent of human infections are estimated to have an animal origin.

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IUCN

March 29, 2022
As the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) talks close in Geneva, Director of IUCN’s International Policy Centre Sonia Peña Moreno reflects on two weeks of negotiations, some missed opportunities, and her hopes for future meetings. Going forward, Parties to the CBD must reconnect with reality and continue to craft a simple, action-oriented post-2020 global biodiversity framework that clearly spells out what must be done to safeguard nature and the services it provides to humanity.

The first in-person meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in over two years opened on Monday 14 March in Geneva, Switzerland. If the opening statements were an indication, the meetings began with high expectations. Parties to the Convention stated their hope to advance a global plan to protect and restore biodiversity for the next decade and beyond (a post-2020 global biodiversity framework).

However, as the days went by, progress became elusive and was replaced by a lack of agreement. The draft text, even on seemingly uncontroversial issues, became full of brackets – denoting text that has yet to be agreed. The overwhelming number of sessions and side-meetings translated into fatigue, and the positive tone became one of frustration.

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The Seattle Times

March 29, 2022
Environmentalists are criticizing slow progress at a U.N.-backed meeting of nearly all the world’s countries toward beefing up protections for biodiversity on Earth, ahead of a crucial meeting expected later this year in China where delegates could sign a global agreement.

A total of 195 countries — but not the United States — which are parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity wrapped up a two-week meeting Tuesday that aimed to make progress toward a deal to prevent the loss of biodiversity and avoid the extinction of many vulnerable species. It also addresses the emergence of pathogens like the coronavirus, which damage both lives and livelihoods.

Delegates agreed to hold an interim meeting in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, in June before a high-level conference known as COP15 in Kunming, China, at a still-undecided date later this year.

“Biodiversity is securing our own survival on this planet. It is not a joking matter,” said Francis Ogwal of Uganda, a meeting co-chair. “Every day that you live as a human being is on biodiversity.”

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BBC

March 29, 2022
A global agreement to reverse the loss of nature and halt extinctions is inching closer, as talks in Geneva enter their final day.

International negotiators are working on the text of a UN framework to safeguard nature ahead of a high-level summit in China later this year.

Observers have slammed the "snail's pace" of negotiations and are pressing for a strengthening of ambitions.

Divisions remain, including over financing the plans.

"The science is very clear, we do not have any more time to waste; we need to take action now," Bernadette Fischler Hooper, head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told BBC News.

"Not only on biodiversity loss, but also on climate change which is a very inter-linked issue. So that is what's at stake here; it's actually the future of the planet and its people."

The final version of the draft UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will be negotiated in Kunming, China, at the Cop15 summit, which is expected to take place at the end of August.

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DW

March 29, 2022
Two weeks of talks that were meant to prepare for a global accord on reversing the destruction of biodiversity have led to just minor steps forward, as the sessions closed on Tuesday.

Although there was some success at the Geneva talks, observers are now calling for the same political leadership that was seen in the run-up to the Paris accord on climate change to breathe urgency into the negotiations.

"This could be a really historic moment in many ways that we've been waiting for for a long time," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told DW from Geneva.

"In the last two weeks, I think we made a significant step forward on a number of very important elements of the biodiversity framework," Lambertini said. "But much progress needs to be done."

"As we move forward, political leadership is going to be critical to resolve some of the stickiest points and to drive consensus. And so we are calling upon heads of states, prime ministers and ministers of environment to drive that leadership," Lambertini said — calls that were echoed by Greenpeace.

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Associated Press

March 14, 2022
Nearly all the world’s countries kicked off a U.N.-backed meeting Monday aimed at preventing the loss of biodiversity — seen as critical to avoiding the extinction of many vulnerable species, the emergence of pathogens like the coronavirus, and the damage to both lives and livelihoods of people around the world, Indigenous peoples in particular.

The two-week meeting of over 190 countries on the Convention on Biological Diversity, after a two-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be the last gathering of its kind before a major conference in the coming months in Kunming, China, that will try to adopt an international agreement on protecting biodiversity.

“We have this one goal, which is to bend the curve on biodiversity loss and really to build that shared future to live in harmony with nature in the long term,” the convention’s executive secretary, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, told reporters Monday.

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France24

March 14, 2022
UN biodiversity negotiations began in Geneva on Monday to hammer out a global deal to better protect nature that is due for approval later this year.

Almost 200 countries are due to adopt a global framework this year to safeguard nature by mid-century from the destruction wrought by humanity, with a key milestone of 30 percent protected by 2030.

"The world is clearly eager for urgent action to protect nature," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in a press release.

"And we have no time to spare. Together we must ultimately deliver a truly historic agreement that puts us firmly on the path to living in harmony with nature."

Talks, which run from March 14 to 29, will set the stage for a crucial United Nations COP 15 biodiversity summit, initially due to be held in Kunming, China in 2020 and postponed several times because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Geneva meeting will announce new dates for COP 15, which is currently slated for April to May but is expected to be delayed again.

According to several sources, the new dates envisaged are from the end of August to the beginning of September.

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Business Standard

March 14, 2022
After a two-year delay, negotiators from more than 190 countries are gathering in Geneva on Monday for a fortnight-long critical discussions around a global strategy to help stem the tide of biodiversity loss.

This is the last time countries will discuss the agreement, known as the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), before the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15).

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework has been called the biodiversity equivalent of the Paris Climate agreement.

"The world is clearly eager for urgent action to protect nature," said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "And we have no time to spare. Together we must ultimately deliver a truly historic agreement that puts us firmly on the path to living in harmony with nature."

Scientists have issued repeated warnings about the dangerous decline in biodiversity. A landmark 2019 global biodiversity assessment found that "nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history -- and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely".

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Nature

December 9, 2021
Advances in spatial biodiversity science and nationally available data have enabled the development of indicators that report on biodiversity outcomes, account for uneven global biodiversity between countries, and provide direct planning support. We urge their inclusion in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

In 2022, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will assemble in Kunming, China to agree on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). Addressing threats that contribute to species extinctions and affect their role in ensuring ecosystem integrity underpins the GBF’s overarching Goal A, which stipulates “healthy and resilient populations of all species” and “reduced extinction rates”. Although multiple actions are needed to safeguard biodiversity, establishing targets for protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) is recognized as a primary mechanism to achieve Goal A.

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The Straits Times

December 3, 2021
The second part of UN biodiversity summit COP15, set to take place in Switzerland in January, has been postponed over the new coronavirus variant Omicron, organisers said on Thursday (Dec 2).

"Uncertainties posed by the Omicron variant and resulting travel measures and restrictions" have forced physical meetings to be postponed, they said in a statement.

The Geneva meeting originally supposed to take place from Jan 18 to 22 could instead be moved to March.

In a sign of Omicron's threat, about 2,000 people, including 1,600 children, have been placed in quarantine after two cases of the variant were found on one of the campuses of the renowned International School of Geneva, Swiss health authorities said on Thursday.

The first round of the COP15 gathering was held in October in south-west China's Kunming, though many attended the meeting virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It saw the adoption of a declaration to recognise the importance of biodiversity in human health, strengthen species protection laws and improve the sharing of genetic resources.

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