natural reserve
Negotiations on framework agreements on biodiversity
A gemsbok in the Namib-Naukluft National Park: According to scientific studies, the dramatic loss of biodiversity poses an unprecedented threat to human health and food security. Photo: Chen Cheng/XinHua/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
In Switzerland, the course is being set for a global framework agreement on biodiversity. Rigorous nature conservation is necessary, but as is so often the case, finances are a sticking point.
The dramatic loss of biodiversity poses an unprecedented threat to human health and food security, according to scientific studies. For this reason, a global framework agreement to protect biological diversity is to be adopted this year.
The final negotiations on the agreement under the umbrella of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is to be adopted in Kunming, China later this year, will begin in Geneva on Monday.
Fear of new pandemics
A far-reaching agreement is also needed to protect the world from future pandemics, said the head of the CBD Secretariat, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema. “People are getting closer and closer to the wild animals, the wildlife is rebelling against it,” she told the German Press Agency. “The species cannot wait – either we move forward or we prepare for a new pandemic.”
In addition to species diversity, biodiversity also includes genetic diversity within species and a diversity of habitats. According to Mrema, 700 billion dollars (a good 640 billion euros) are needed for protective measures every year. If the approximately 500 billion dollars that, according to her, flow into subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity today, were reallocated, a lot would already have been achieved.
“This year, the course for the future of mankind must be set in Kunming,” said Ralf Sonntag from the German environmental organization World Future Council of the dpa. “Putting 30 percent of the seas and 30 percent of the land under effective protection by 2030 is the only way to at least partially compensate for the loss of species. The result is just as important for future life on earth as the Paris climate agreement.” It is controversial, for example, what exactly “effective protection” means and to what extent such protected areas can still be used commercially.
dependent on animals
The World Biodiversity Council IPBES emphasizes that humans cannot survive without nature. 75 percent of food crops, including fruits and vegetables and crops such as coffee, cocoa and almonds, rely on animal pollination. A million animal and plant species – more than twelve percent of all species – are threatened with extinction, some within a few decades. Species extinction is now at least ten to a hundred times more severe than the average over the past ten million years. Between 1970 and 2016, populations of observed vertebrate species shrank by 68 percent, according to the Living Planet Index from the environmental foundation WWF and other organizations.
More than 1000 representatives of the 196 CBD contracting states are negotiating in Geneva. In 2010 in Aichi, Japan, they had already set themselves goals to combat the loss of biodiversity by 2020, but not a single one was fully achieved globally.