Convention on Biological Diversity Archives

Convention on Biological Diversity

December 18, 2022

After two tense weeks, world awaits COP15 plan to save Earth’s species

The clock is ticking in Montreal, Canada as representatives from over 190 countries wrap up two tense weeks of negotiations over a framework to reverse Earth’s extinction crisis. The United Nations meeting, known as COP15, is set to conclude Monday.

Clashes over how to finance the plan, among other obstacles, have led to uncertainties about the meeting’s prospects for success. However, yesterday COP15 president Huang Runqiu, China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, announced he would release a text of the final framework on Sunday.

The convention’s timing couldn’t be more critical. Human activities such as deforestation, overfishing, and agriculture have driven an estimated one million species to the brink of extinction.

“It’s a really, really important meeting in which, in a way, the future of the planet is at stake,” said Patricia Balvanera, a professor at the Center for Ecosystem Research at the National University of Mexico.

COP15, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, centers around finalizing the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious document designed to steer the world towards its 2050 vision of “living in harmony with nature.” The first draft contains 21 targets to be completed by 2030, which include protecting 30% of global land and oceans (the 30×30 initiative), restoring 3 billion hectares, and halting species extinctions. The framework would replace the failed Aichi targets set in 2010 and comes on the heels of the COP27 climate change conference that took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November.

While the US has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, the 1992 agreement on which COP15 and previous meetings are based, the US committed to a 30×30 target in 2021 and has sent representatives to Montreal.

October 13, 2022

Endangered Species Act failures offer “cautionary tale”

by Shannon Kelleher

The strongest US conservation law lacks the resources to help most imperiled species fully recover, according to a new study. While thousands of species have been listed by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since it was passed in 1973, only 54 have recovered to the point where they no longer require protection.

The study suggests that the failures of this law, which remains one of the strongest conservation measures in the world, stem from insufficient funding and a tendency to offer protection too late, when population sizes have already severely diminished.

“For decades, the agency that is primarily responsible for operationalizing the ESA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, has been starved for resources,” said Erich Eberhard, a researcher at Columbia University and an author of the study. “As a result, we are slow to give species the protections they deserve, typically waiting until they are extremely rare, with very small population sizes, and thus at extreme risk of extinction.”

“The Fish and Wildlife Service needs more resources to be able to process petitions more quickly and get species listed sooner,” he added.

The findings may offer lessons for the upcoming United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which will convene in December with the intent to finalize a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. The framework would help conserve the estimated one million plant and animal species at risk for extinction worldwide due to human activities.