Ambitious goals for biodiversity urgently needed!
"Living in harmony with nature" is the 2050 vision of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Twenty biodiversity targets were defined for the past decade. Not a single one of them was achieved in 2020. Now an international consortium of researchers examined drafts for new targets. bioDISCOVERY is part of it.
-
- Picture: Cornelia Krug
A decade ago, 20 aims were set to inspire nations to "take effective and urgent action to the loss of biodiversity". These "Aichi Biodiversity Targets" were formulated as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Strategic Plan for the period 2011 to 2020. Not a single one of them was achieved.
The international community is now negotiating new targets, a so-called "Global Biodiversity Framework". This new framework puts an emphasis on broad-based actions by governments and societies to achieve the necessary transformation to "put biodiversity on a path to recovery for the benefit of planet and people".
The process of formulating new targets is undertaken by an open-ended working group and includes extensive consultations and opportunities for input from a variety of interested organisations and stakeholders, including science, societal actors and NGOs. Making use of this opportunity, bioDISCOVERY - an international research programme located at the Department of Geography - supported a meeting organized by the Earth Commission in close collaboration with the Convention on Biological Diversity and Future Earth. More than 60 scientists from 26 countries came together to make recommendations based on the latest knowledge in biodiversity and ecosystem science.
Multiple, interlinked and highly ambitious goals are urgently needed
A paper recently published in Science to which I have contributed as co-author lists three points that are critical to consider when setting goals to stabilise or reverse biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems:
1. Address the various facets of biodiversity with multiple goals
Nature is complex and interwoven, and has different facets - genes, species, populations and their evolutionary history, ecosystems and the services they provide. Each of these differ in their geographic distribution, and their response to human induced changes.
2. Define goals holistically
The different facets of biodiversity are closely interwoven and interlinked, synergies and trade-offs need to be considered when designing goals. Actions can contribute to multiple goals at once, but the failure to achieve one goal might undermine others. Goals also need to be set not only for pristine ecosystems, but also for systems that are transformed and managed by humans.
3. Set ambitious goals
Aiming high, as only the highest level of ambition and integrated approaches will give a realistic chance to stop and reverse biodiversity loss. Setting the bar too low will not only be inadequate in stopping the loss of biodiversity, it will also undermine progress towards Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement.
-
- Sustainability at the crossroads
- Sustainability at the crossroads (Díaz et al, Science 2020)
Only greatest efforts can halt the decline of biodiversity
The table illustrates the potential varying levels of ambition have for achievement - or non-achievement - of goals for the different facets of biodiversity. Only the highest ambition is able to stop and reverse biodiversity loss. But even the best goals cannot be achieved without the necessary action to tackle the drivers of change. It is not sufficient to address the direct drivers of biodiversity loss through conservation actions - we also need to address the socio-economic drivers and their underlying value systems to achieve the necessary transformation to achieve the vision of "living in harmony with nature".
Convention on Biological Diversity
Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020
Aichi Biodiversity Targets
Díaz, S., Zafra-Calvo, N., Purvis, A., Verburg, P.H., Obura, D., Leadley, P., Chaplin-Kramer, R., De Meester, L., Dulloo, E., Martín-López, B., Shaw, M.R., Visconti, P., Broadgate, W., Bruford, M.W., Burgess, N.D., Cavender-Bares, J., DeClerck, F., Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Garibaldi, L.A., Hill, S.L.L., Isbell, F., Khoury, C.K., Krug, C.B., Liu, J., Maron, M., McGowan, P.J.K., Pereira, H.M., Reyes-García, V., Rocha, J., Rondinini, C., Shannon, L., Shin, Y.-J., Snelgrove, P.V.R., Spehn, E.M., Strassburg, B., Subramanian, S.N., Tewksbury, J.J., Watson, J.E.M., and Zanne. A.E. (2020). Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability. Science 370:411-413
doi: 10.1126/science.abe1530
More news
- The 125th and last
- Gletscher vor 125 Jahren und heute
- Ist das Navi in der Hand der erste Schritt zum betreuten Wohnen?
- Catapulted into a new world
- How to make health care service provision more equitable and greener
- Our world is a multidimensional collage
- Is Tourism the Beginning or the End? Livelihoods of Georgian Mountain People at Stake
- «Wir müssen den Klimawandel systematisch als Risiko mitdenken»
- Andean mountain regions: Fragile sentinels of landscape and cultural transformation
- Temporary streams at the doorsteps of Irchel Campus
- Counting snowflakes from space
- Provokation und Revolte am GIUZ
- "The Eyes Have It!" - Where we look while navigating
- Investigating plants genetic structure from above
- «I see and I remember. I do and I understand.»
- «Für uns, unsere Kinder und Kindeskinder»
- Was macht die Digitalisierung mit unserer Umwelt?
- The role of a developer at GIUZ
- Dem unterirdischen Wasser auf der Spur
- Was der Geographieunterricht zur Bildung im 21. Jahrhundert beitragen kann
- Nepal - Kein Land für alte Leute?
- Klimawandel in der Schweiz: Alles, was du wissen musst!
- Wie Instagram unseren Umgang mit der Natur verändert
- Numbed by navigation technologies: How can we counteract?
- This is blog post number 100
- Investigating food sustainability: from production and trade to consumption
- Geographers live in concert - postponed!
- Global Glyphosate: Uneven Geographies of herbicide production and use
- "Pesticides burned grass and know-how"
- Vier Standorte in 125 Jahren
- Dietikon: Vom Bauerndorf zur Stadt
- What is biodiversity?
- Fieldwork in rural Nepal: reflection on positionality, responsibility, and roles
- Das Schulfach Geographie: heute und morgen
- Mapping functional diversity from space
- Adieu ewig’ Eis
- Landschaftsleistungen erlebbar machen
- What is the role of variability in nature?
- The Skin of Chitwan
- Animated flight line collection over Switzerland
- Space, Nature & Society: Wo wir forschen und was wir tun
- Do you know about the 3MT competition?
- An academic career in ecology
- Hundreds of students enrich the start of the semester at the University of Zurich
- Wie bewegen wir uns in Zukunft fort?
- Willkommen im GEO- und ESS-Studium!
- Expeditions from the window: How do you perceive your surroundings?
- Researching a pandemic - during a pandemic
- Das Geoteam stellt sich vor
- How roots influence climate change
- Imaging the earth from above
- Studierende sammeln Daten: Natur, Landschaft und Ressourcen
- Trouvaillen aus dem Archiv
- The fluorescence of phytoplankton from 800 km above
- Der kalte Norden ist auch familiär
- How the COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us to tackle the climate crisis
- Studierende sammeln Daten: Migration, Mobilität und Stadt
- Summer break!
- On the art of failing forward
- Die Wasserstadt Zürich mit dem Smartphone entdecken
- Tracing the tracks of the first Swiss polar explorers
- Geistreiche Wortspiele
- Von Gemüse über Milch bis zu Kaffee: Solawis in der Deutschschweiz
- Berner Seeland - quo vadis?
- Intense days on the field course to Val Piora
- Panta rhei - everything flows
- Comic Strip Geographies
- Where we come from
- A journey through time with loess deposits
- Schlacht am Morgarten 1315: Wie sah die Landschaft damals aus?
- Berne going green
- Biochar increases rice root architecture
- Cycling and pedestrian travel in Covid-19 world
- The impact of Covid-19 from an economic geography perspective
- Why do we create virtual forests?
- Wenn das Eis fehlt: Das Lötschental und seine Zukunft
- Planning ski tours: insights from Big Data
- Is there a place for people in protected areas?
- Biodiversity in Irchel park
- Cress, tomatoes and the meaning of the universe
- Scientific games to understand social-ecological system dynamics
- Insight into the WGMS
- Connecting female hydrologists worldwide: an initiative born at GIUZ
- Shopping with Maximilian
- Sars-CoV-2 and food producers: who cares?
- The value of water
- Mit Slimy-Masse die Gletscherschmelze illustrieren
- Was machen Geographinnen und Geographen nach dem Studium?
- Geographie-Student Jonathan, der Erdball und die CO2-Männli
- Two study programs at the Department of Geography
- Urban Sustainability as New Financial Fix?
- Silently in the background
- Interaktiv und interdisziplinär
- Unpacking the complexity of social-ecological systems
- Listen to the landscape
- Creating synergies between homeschooling and university teaching
- The first fully remote PhD defenses
- Der Weltwassertag fällt ins Wasser
- The GIUZ Sustainability Task Force
- What is geography?
- «Geografe nüme schlafe!»
- Zurich on its way to the 2000-Watt society
- Spatial genetics for plant-based communities - and much more!
- Strebergärtli - Irchel Garden Project
- Writing papers - a nightmare. Or not?
- Urbanised landscapes - living between nature and civilisation
- A 3D view on breathing forests
- «Wir sind hier, wir sind laut!»
- What is EGEA?
- Exploring the future of biodiversity
- Avalanche bulletins in the Alps: consistency across borders
- Ice age coffee
- Greenland 1912 - and today!
- «Wir sitzen alle im selben Boot»
- Air miles monitoring & reduction @ GIUZ
- The "Geographie Alumni UZH" society: a platform for people interested in Geography
- Knowledge in images - information design today
- Geographie in Aufruhr
- Glacier measurement series with mayonnaise
- Landkarten im Reduit
- Mapping the plastic soup
- New unit "Space, Nature and Society"
- How it all began
- Happy 125th Anniversary