Biodiversity challenge gives clarion call for business

THE International Day for Biological Diversity next Monday (May 22) is perhaps the most important one yet, with an increasing number of scientists highlighting a sixth great extinction facing the planet.

The United Nations (UN) now estimates we have as few as three years left to preserve the habitability of our world and the diversity of the species that inhabit it. So this requires nothing less than a radical change in our relationship with nature and other living beings.

The UN’s latest global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services highlights the responsibility of human activities in the massive loss of biodiversity. Not only are an estimated million plant and animal species now on the verge of dying off, but monitored wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of around 70 per cent in the past half-century as well. It is also estimated that the equivalent of around 90 hockey rinks’ worth of forest are being lost every minute.

The fact that this cannot go on is increasingly recognised not just by governments and campaigning groups, but also the private sector. More and more businesses are aware that at least half of global gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to be critically dependent on healthy functioning ecosystems – either directly, from the use of resources like water, processes like pollination, or conditions like soil health, or via indirect activities that rely on those natural processes.

In this context, the reason why this year’s Biodiversity Day is so important is not just because of the crisis in the natural world, which has been evident for some years. In addition, there may now be a precious window of opportunity to arrest and hopefully reverse the huge range of challenges that are fuelling the biodiversity crisis, including climate change, invasive species, over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and urbanisation.

This window has arisen because of the agreement at last year’s UN COP15 (the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity) summit in Montreal. Hence the theme of next Monday’s big event is “From agreement to action: Build back biodiversity”.

This COP15 deal was agreed some three decades after the UN Convention on Biological Diversity treaty was drafted in 1992 to protect the world’s rich tapestry of biodiversity. The Montreal pact, which replaces the agreement from the last major biodiversity summit held in Japan in 2010, provides a far-reaching, multi-decade framework which maps out a plan for tackling the crisis in the natural world potentially until mid-century, including key targets to be met by 2030.

The agreement is important for business for multiple reasons, including the deal to phase out environmentally harmful subsidies. It is estimated that US$1.8 trillion of subsidies – equivalent to about 2 per cent of global GDP – are provided to industries that are driving nature loss and climate change. Nations already committed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 to “phase down and out” all “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. So nature-harming subsidies were the next step with this discussion in Montreal.

Another important discussion in Montreal centred around corporate reporting. The intent here is to, ultimately, require governments to lay out plans for firms, beginning with the largest businesses in sectors with the most negative impacts, to disclose their biodiversity commitments and dependencies. One key business coalition lobbying in Montreal on this issue, which comprised more than 330 businesses and financial institutions spanning 52 countries, signed a “make it mandatory” declaration supporting the treaty’s corporate reporting targets.

However, as important a breakthrough as Montreal was, it now needs to be delivered speedily with the goal of making the treaty as consequential for stemming biodiversity loss as the 2015 Paris Agreement still might be for action on climate change. The need is particularly pressing as Montreal came, tragically, after countries failed to meet a single one of the targets set over the last decade.

More than 20 targets were created by a UN working group in the years leading up to COP15. Delivering on these will be as difficult, and possibly much more so, as agreeing on them in Montreal last year in painstaking negotiations in which there were several key sticking points. These continue to cause disagreements, including how ambitious the new plan should have been; how it will be financed; and how to ensure progress is measured and reported transparently.

For example, one of the key agreement targets is a commitment to protect at least 30 per cent of land and water around the globe by 2030. More than 100 countries joined a coalition in support of this “30 by 30” goal, which means there is now a significant increase in land and ocean protection. However, even this core achievement is seen by some NGOs as too little, too late.

With the stakes in play so high, it will be critical for governments now to transpose into domestic law all the key commitments agreed in Montreal. The country “commitments” put forward there will be most credible – and durable beyond the next round of national elections – if they are backed up by national legislation which is difficult to roll back.

And this is especially when supported – as in many countries – by well-informed, cross-party lawmakers from across the political spectrum who can put in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation, plus hold governments to account.

One key challenge here is that so few heads of government were at the Montreal event. This reflects the fact that even a significant number of those top politicians who have sought to show leadership on key environmental issues such as climate change have not – yet – extended this to the fight to protect biodiversity.

One way to change this might be to ensure there is greater discussion of biodiversity issues at other global forums, including the upcoming Japanese-chaired Group of Seven, Indian-hosted Group of 20, and Dubai-chaired COP28 climate summit. The Dubai global warming event appears particularly relevant given that climate change is increasingly accelerating the loss of biodiversity and key ecosystems, including biodiverse forestry, which may well be a death knell to the 1.5 deg C temperature goal in the 2015 Paris treaty.

So with the Montreal deal now badly needing next steps in implementation, the world is at a crossroads. Failure to deliver speedily will be a disaster, yet success still holds the possibility of a powerful new framework for nature that becomes a foundation for sustainable development for billions across the world in the 2020s and beyond.

The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.