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*Global CA-CoP* *CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF*

*for sustainable agriculture, land use and ecosystem management*


Dear Subscribers,

Please see below a message from David Duthie from Bioplan on Biodiversity.

*Amir Kassam *

*Moderator*

*Global CA-CoP*

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

URL: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture



*Regional CA websites:*

URL: http://www.act-africa.org/

URL: https://ecaf.org/
URL: http://www.caa-ap.org/

URL: http://caapas.org/

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: David Duthie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2022 at 07:14
Subject: Oh Dear, Biodiversity Is About to Have Its Climate Change Moment
To: bioplan <[log in to unmask]>


Dear BIOPLANNERS,



As a good number of us are probably paying at least some attention to the
ongoing football (soccer) World Cup in Qatar, it can perhaps serve as an
exemplar for why we are still walking north on that southbound train
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fratical.org%2Fco-globalize%2FNonSBtrain.html&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390976844360%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=sGxdggS%2F3BSg8AZkkNGc0Bqbaj0kRnYhW%2BcAWfUG53k%3D&reserved=0>
with respect to climate change – see *Qatar World Cup: Fifa's carbon
neutrality claim 'misleading and incredibly dangerous*
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fsport%2Ffootball%2F63466168&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390976844360%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Zcy3luU7FEbc%2BtcaTtf0FQXAYzLF4iwJ3%2FomPPUcKng%3D&reserved=0>*'
– *with Mike Berners-Lee calling it the biggest single climate negative
event outside of war, in a country with the highest per capita carbon
emissions in the world.



Meanwhile, biodiversity is about to have its climate change moment in
Montreal as the final part of CoP15 convenes there on 7th December for two
weeks of negotiations to finalise the post-2020 Global Biodiversity
Framework – see *Biodiversity Is About to Have Its Climate Change Moment*
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sierraclub.org%2Fsierra%2Fbiodiversity-about-have-its-climate-change-moment&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390977000584%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=IFoKMUOT9h1IK5OG56KyAwdqz92HxkUoVQF%2BIpOzXMc%3D&reserved=0>
by* Ed Gumbine *(and below my signature).  Although written with a typical
US Sierra Club reader in mind, I think the article nicely lines up the
scale of the biodiversity challenge with a positive “we can (all) do it”
spirit.



In the piece, Ed does not clearly state which climate moment he is
analogising to – would that be the Rio moment, the Kyoto moment, the
Copenhagen moment, the Paris moment, even the Sharm El-Sheikh moment?



Perhaps, rather than look for a particular *moment*, the comparison should
be on the *direction* of change.  The New Yorker magazine has recently
published two excellent overviews of this for climate change.



Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on an alphabetic tour of “*the stories we tell
ourselves about the future*” with respect to climate change in her “*Climate
Change from A to Z*
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2022%2F11%2F28%2Fclimate-change-from-a-to-z&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390977000584%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Ss1hDQHTeEOUV4lQhTK9paMhvzg9QM90ixXOL%2BHm9Eg%3D&reserved=0>”,
whilst Bill McKibben explores the seemingly irresistible march toward
geoengineering “solutions” in “*Dimming the sun to cool the planet is a
desperate idea yet were inching toward it*
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fnews%2Fannals-of-a-warming-planet%2Fdimming-the-sun-to-cool-the-planet-is-a-desperate-idea-yet-were-inching-toward-it&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390977000584%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=BU9i2JlcpCbzT8NwnvnCRz%2FcUj4ZB%2B9sgBZ89LEOdeg%3D&reserved=0>”.
Both are well-researched, readable, and free access.



Finally, and sadly, Herman Daly, one of the pioneers of environmental
economics and champion of the steady state economy, has passed away at the
age of 83.  You can read a eulogy and some of his pithy commentaries here
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsteadystate.org%2Fherman-daly-1938-2022-up-to-the-steady-state-economy%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390977000584%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=HMRV2%2BJA7JeIqS7fDsuNkIrkNSjOT7fegEL1nnt4JEY%3D&reserved=0>
and here
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsteadystate.org%2Fin-commemoration-a-sampling-of-herman-daly%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C8c57451d4bf74056b68008dacda13468%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C0%7C638048390977000584%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wnBnqX8daiQiIPAopVKGCo%2FyT91kaCPaCAbLEFePKq8%3D&reserved=0>
.



Best wishes



David Duthie



 ****************

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****************



*Biodiversity Is About to Have Its Climate Change Moment *by* Ed Gumbine*


Thirty years ago, in 1992, two events occurred that changed my life—I
published my first book on the “biodiversity crisis,” and nations convened
in Rio at the Earth Summit to approve the UN Framework Conventions on
climate and biodiversity. Though my book is long gone, these climate and
biodiversity accords are the hottest environmental news in the world right
now.


These meetings are making headlines because climate impacts are
mushrooming, and the biodiversity crisis is now a full-on planetary
emergency. And while climate issues capture media attention with every
extreme flood, drought, and wildfire, few people comprehend the
global-scale unraveling of nature.


But biodiversity is about to get its moment. Next month, in Montreal, 196
nations will convene for the Conference of the Parties (COP) 15 to hammer
out a new 10-year plan to reverse the accelerating loss of life on Earth.


What do you need to know about the most important environmental meeting you
may never have heard of? Below is a roundup of key COP15 components that
help explain why this event is crucial to our future.


*How the Convention on Biological Diversity works (and doesn’t work)*


This convention entered into international law in 1993 with three main
goals: conserve biodiversity, promote sustainable use of biodiversity, and
create fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from Earth’s genetic
resources. Work is administrated through a secretariat in Montreal with
each signatory state constructing its own detailed biodiversity action plan
in line with agreed-upon targets. Aspirational goals have been the norm
with this convention, and actions by member states to protect nature and
spur green development are voluntary.


There is a problem with all this: Virtually all the biodiversity goals set
up under the convention have never been achieved. Meanwhile, 70 percent of
lands and 60 percent of oceans on Earth have been significantly altered by
people. And entire groups of organisms are under pressure. Birds have
declined by 29 percent since 1970, and mammals, reptiles, insects, and bats
are not far behind. The driver of these changes is well known—more people
are exploiting more of the planet, and lifeforms from microbes to Amazonian
forests are on the ropes.


The good news is that since 2019 and the release of several scientific
reports that reviewed global efforts to sustain life, it has become clear
that things must change.


And not just change through incremental steps that inch us ever closer
toward distant goals. The new catchphrase on the lips of almost every
expert and delegate engaged with COP15 is "transformative change," meaning
wholesale economic and social reorganization so that loss of species,
ecosystems, and diminishment of natures’ contributions to people—clean
water and air, crop pollinators, functional nutrient cycles, flood
regulation and more—is reversed by 2030 and restored by 2050.


*Getting to know the Global Biodiversity Framework*


The COP15 game plan is embodied in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework
(GBF) that will be voted on by all countries in Montreal and come into
immediate force through 2030.


You may have heard about the GBF through media coverage of its most
well-known target, which goes by the name of 30X30. This refers to
increasing the area of protected lands and waters in most countries to 30
percent by 2030. But with these numbers currently at 17 percent for land
and 10 percent for water, this proposed expansion represents a heavy lift.
Is 30X30 even possible? Yes; the science says this is a critical goal if we
want to protect life, and global leaders are lining up in support. Coming
into COP15, over a hundred nations have already signed on to 30X30.

But the GBF doesn’t stop at 30x30. The draft contains 21 additional
targets, and this is where the challenges come into focus. There are
targets that address traditional conservation concerns around endangered
plants and animals, environmental pollution, disruptive invasive organisms,
and ecological restoration of damaged lands.


And there are targets that expand traditional visions of how to protect
nature. These include mandating that private businesses track their impacts
on biodiversity, creating more green spaces in cities, including Indigenous
peoples in decision-making, and committing to gender participation and
equal access across all convention projects.


All these objectives are important. But there are four targets that will
make or break the ultimate success of COP15.


First on this list of critical GBF targets: how we grow, transport, and
consume our food. Agriculture transforms wild forests and fields into
simplified, single-purpose lands that result in a scorched-earth effect on
wild nature. Cumulatively, these impacts already account for 60 percent of
current biodiversity loss on land, while commercial fishing results in the
overexploitation of marine fisheries. And this tremendous pressure is not
going away; we will need to produce two times more food by 2050 given
projected human population increases and consumption patterns.

Then there is the fact that about a third of all food grown today is wasted
from farm to table. Right now, no country in the world has any effective
policy for how to grow and transport food, catch fish sustainably, and
reduce food waste.


Draft GBF Target 10 wants to change this. Doing so demands a mix of
actions: removing billions of dollars in subsidies that undergird
agriculture and fishing but destroy nature, reconfiguring global food
supply chains, and encouraging people everywhere to shift their diets away
from meat. Getting countries as diverse as India, France, and Tanzania to
act on these issues may be difficult to envision. But not transforming
agriculture, food supply chains, and eating habits is simply no longer on
the table—if we want food systems that function into the future.


Another key target is item 14. This section recognizes that biodiversity
doesn’t have a chance until we mainstream protection principles into
everyday activities. This goes well beyond improving environmental impact
statements; this transformative target aims to bring biodiversity into all
levels of public and private decision-making from building infrastructure
to investment planning. This would create a world where finance and
environment ministers both have the same basic concerns, and bankers would
add biodiversity benefits to the bottom line. After all, over half of all
global economic activity depends on healthy species and functioning
ecosystems.


Changes are already underway. China is experimenting with performance
incentives for municipal officials if they incorporate biodiversity
benefits into local planning. And 41 countries have signed on to BIOFIN, a
UN program that works with national ministries to construct sustainable
financial plans and then link them to existing national biodiversity action
plans. Private businesses are also waking up. In the buildup to COP15, it
is exciting to see multiple coalitions of corporations getting on board
with biodiversity accounting.


Target 8 speaks to most of the people I know who have explored the UN
conventions on biodiversity and climate and immediately ask, “Why have we
wasted time attempting to solve these two paramount challenges?”

Well, first, it’s easier to understand climate. When heat waves, droughts,
and wildfires impact your life, you receive direct messages that something
is wrong. Biodiversity dysfunction, on the other hand, is almost never in
your face. Who can tell when the West Coast nitrogen cycle is not working
well, groundwater is disappearing, or bat and bee populations are in
decline?


Second, the UN climate convention contains one goal—to keep average warming
below 2°C. But there is no single goal for biodiversity protection;
supporting life on Earth is complex and will require the fulfillment of 22
targets according to the draft GBF. This is probably 21 targets more than
most of us can comprehend.


However, if you look carefully at biodiversity and climate goals, you can
see that they are deeply linked together. To attain our climate goal, we
will have to reach net-zero emissions into the atmosphere. On the ground,
this means we will have to protect all global ecosystems that store
“irrecoverable” carbon stocks that we cannot afford to release into the air.


The fourth critical goal, Target 19, is clear: We are going to have to pay
the price for keeping Earth intact.


Consider the numbers. None of the world’s 17 most biodiverse nations come
close to adequately funding their existing protected areas. Brazil, the
most diverse country in the world, funds less than 20 percent of its
biodiversity management costs. In the US, the National Park Service budget
has gone up by 5 percent in the past decade, but inflation over the same
period hit 32 percent.


Overall, the gap between what countries collectively spend on biodiversity
and what we need to spend is about US $711 billion a year. That amount of
money may appear daunting, and maybe it is. But people spend more every
year on cigarettes and a similar amount on soft drinks.

The draft GBT proposes to close this huge gap by breaking down funding into
two packages. The first package would come from repurposing the US$500
billion in negative subsidies that we collectively spend every year on
nature-destroying actions that prop up conventional agriculture, extractive
forestry, and overfishing. (Agricultural subsidies that harm biodiversity
make up around 80 percent of this amount, providing clear evidence why food
systems reform is so necessary for the future of life on Earth.)


This leaves about US$200 billion to fill out package two. No problem, given
that just one new law in one country, the 2021 Infrastructure Improvement
and Jobs Act in the US, contains US$350 billion for highway improvements.
So, if all COP15 countries increased their domestic spending on nature,
wealthy nations stepped up support for conservation in low- and
middle-income nations, and private businesses stopped talking about
corporate responsibility and started contributing toward their biodiversity
bottom line, we could easily fund a healthy biodiverse future.


*What happens in Montreal must not stay in Montreal*


As the COP27 climate convention concluded in Egypt last week, presidents
and prime ministers made speeches that, for the first time, explicitly
recognized links between climate and biodiversity action. The word in the
halls of the meeting was that climate and biodiversity efforts “cannot
fail.”


The specific GBF targets that are agreed upon at COP15 cannot be left
stranded inside the convention venue. Actions will need to quickly shift
from the dry atmosphere of international negotiations into national
corridors of power in capitols and parliaments where specific policies are
fleshed out and into government bureaucracies in every country where the
implementation rubber hits the road. Work must quicken in corporate
boardrooms where vast sums await allocation, in environmental groups that
can help monitor success and failure, and into our homes where we live.


Maybe the most transformative piece of the biodiversity puzzle is that it
shows us that nature and people are one, and that our traditional
conservation vision of protecting a small portion of Earth as parks and
wilderness was never going to be enough to allow us to take the rest of
nature for granted. Even expanding to 30X30 begs the question "what about
the other 70 percent of nature?"


This question pushes us to step up and act personally on behalf of
biodiversity. We can learn about the local ecosystems where we live and get
involved with their protection. We can pay more attention to how food gets
onto our table and into our bellies and make better choices given
agriculture's outsize impacts on biodiversity (and climate). We can demand
that politicians connect the dots between conservation, climate, and human
health and well-being and then vote for them. We can do all of these
things, or we can select actions where we can do our best.

We don’t need a successful COP15 to take action. But a strong GBF will
bolster local and global efforts in these uncertain times. No scientist can
say how much time we have left to do right by nature, but as we track
upcoming events in Montreal, and put our own household biodiversity plans
into action, we are about to find out.

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