Gaps in Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework
GS Paper – 3 Environmental Pollution & Degradation, Government Policies & Interventions, International Treaties & Agreements, Important International Institutions.
Why in the news?
- According to a group of environmental scientists, ecologists, and policy specialists, the draught of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework does not account for the entirety of chemical pollutants that threaten ecosystems worldwide.
What are the Framework’s Gaps?
- Chemical Pollutants: The draught agreement falls short by confining itself to nutrients, pesticides, and plastics, leaving excluded many compounds of great concern and importance, such as persistent and hazardous pollutants like mercury and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), as well as pharmaceuticals.
- LNPP Inside Protected Areas: At the moment, LNPP (area where natural processes predominate) comprises approximately 56 percent of terrestrial land, excluding permanent ice and rock. However, just 20% of this land is legally protected. This indicates that, excluding permanent ice and rock, LNPP covers only 11% of the world’s land inside protected zones. The group believes that this is a problem because the post-2020 framework calls for at least 30% of land to be conserved by 2030.
- LNPP refers to land with little human disturbance and/or ecologically intact vegetation, which provides room and habitat for biodiversity to thrive.
What exactly is the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework?
About:
- It is a new framework that will guide global initiatives to preserve and maintain nature and its important services to humanity through 2030.
- It seeks to elicit immediate and transformative action from governments and all sectors of society in order to contribute to the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity, its Protocols, and other global biodiversity agreements, procedures, and instruments.
- The framework is based on a philosophy of change that emphasises the need for immediate policy action at the global, regional, and national levels to reform economic, social, and financial models.
Goals and objectives:
Four objectives must be met by 2050:
- To halt biodiversity extinction and decline.
- By conserving, we can improve and maintain nature’s services to humanity.
- To ensure that all people benefit fairly and equally from the exploitation of genetic resources.
- To bridge the gap between existing financial and other implementation resources and those required to accomplish the 2050 Vision.
2030 Action Targets: The framework comprises 21 action-oriented targets for urgent action over the next decade, including:
- To include at least 30% of the world’s land and sea in protected zones.
- A 50% reduction in the rate of invasive alien species introduction, as well as controls or elimination of such species to remove or reduce their impacts.
- Reducing nutrient loss to the environment by at least half, pesticides by at least two-thirds, and plastic trash discharge by at least half.
- Nature-based contributions to global climate change mitigation efforts of at least 10 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of equivalent carbon dioxide) per year, with no detrimental impacts on biodiversity.
- Redirecting, reusing, modifying, or eliminating damaging to biodiversity incentives in a reasonable and equitable manner, with a reduction of at least USD 500 billion per year.
What are the suggestions?
- A broader range of chemical contaminants must be targeted for policies and actions to be implemented under the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
- Countries from all around the world have decided to form an intergovernmental science-policy panel on chemicals and waste in order to combine existing information and inform policymakers.
- Chemical contaminants prevalent in every ecosystem on the planet, including distant Arctic, Antarctic, and Himalayan ecosystems, should drive new biodiversity framework negotiators to include these as threats to global biodiversity.
- Protecting biodiversity is critical for food supply; there should be a net gain of at least 5% in the area, connectedness, and integrity of natural systems by 2030 and 15% by 2050 to support healthy and resilient populations of all species.
- Changing diets, raising crop and livestock productivity, and limiting agricultural land expansion would all contribute to meeting global biodiversity, food security, and climate mitigation targets by 2050.
What is the Biological Diversity Convention?
- Since 1993, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has been in existence as a legally enforceable convention to conserve biodiversity. It has three key goals:
- Biological diversity preservation.
- The long-term utilisation of biological diversity components.
- The equal and fair distribution of the advantages derived from the use of genetic resources.
- It has been ratified by nearly all countries (notably, the US has signed but not ratified).
- The CBD Secretariat is headquartered in Montreal, Canada, and is run by the United Nations Environment Programme.
- The Parties (Countries) to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) convene on a regular basis, and these gatherings are known as Conferences of Parties (COP).
- The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, a supplementary agreement to the Convention, was adopted in 2000. It went into effect on September 11, 2003.
- The Protocol aims to conserve biological variety from the threats posed by live changed organisms as a result of modern biotechnology.
- The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Resulting from Their Utilization (ABS) was adopted at the COP10 meeting in Nagoya, Japan in 2010. It went into effect on October 12, 2014.
- It applies not only to CBD-covered genetic resources and the benefits derived from their use, but also to traditional knowledge (TK) linked with CBD-covered genetic resources and the benefits derived from their use.
- Along with the Nagoya Protocol on Genetic Resources, the COP-10 created a ten-year framework for all countries to take action to conserve biodiversity.
- Officially titled as the “Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020,” it established a set of 20 ambitious yet feasible biodiversity targets known as the Aichi Targets.
- In order to give effect to the CBD rules, India established the Biological Diversity Act in 2002.
