News Highlight
The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework has been decided to convene in December 2022 by The UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Parties.
Key Takeaway
- IUCN Members see the framework as a global strategy for jointly safeguarding nature and securing our shared future.
 Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework: Briefing of the summit
- What is the issue?
- Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will meet in December 2022 (COP15) to determine the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (the framework).
- Despite an increase in biodiversity policies and actions, indicators show that the drivers of biodiversity loss have worsened and biodiversity.
- According to analysis, there have been gaps in countries’ ambition and commitment to addressing nature loss over the last decade.
- According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, one million species are currently threatened with extinction.
- Modelling shows that it is not too late to turn these trends around.
- Why is this important?
- Ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss exacerbate climate change and endanger natural processes.
- Healthy ecosystems support 55% of global GDP, and biodiversity conservation and use underpin sustainable development.
- An ambitious new framework is required to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050.
- The framework and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration provide opportunities to reverse large-scale environmental loss.
- Healthy ecosystems protect communities from climate change impacts like extreme weather.
- According to the Paris Agreement, nature-based solutions could meet up to 37% of our climate change mitigation needs.
Objectives
- The new framework has four primary objectives
- To prevent biodiversity extinction and decline.
- To bridge the gap between available financial and other implementation resources and those required to realise the 2050 Vision.
- To enhance and retain nature’s services to humans by conserving.
- To ensure that all people benefit pretty and equally from using genetic resources.
Need for Financial Assistance
- The most challenging aspect of negotiating and implementing the framework is the requirement for increased financial assistance to developing nations, which are also the hardest affected by biodiversity losses.
- The finance gap will be gradually closed to at least $700 billion per year by 2030 thanks to the framework’s deployment of sufficient financial resources.
What has to be done?
- To attain a nature-positive world by 2030 for the planet’s and people’s benefit, parties to the CBD must concur to stop and reverse biodiversity loss.
- Global targets must be measurable, underpinned by science, and have explicit outcomes.
- By 2030, at least 30% of the earth should be covered by protected areas and other efficient area-based conservation initiatives.
- The 30% must incorporate all areas of particular importance for biodiversity, including Key Biodiversity areas (KBAs).
- Monitoring the framework’s implementation is essential, and IUCN supports the monitoring programme through indicators proposed in the draft framework.
- Parties should consider the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as the world’s most comprehensive information source on global extinction risk.
- The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric, co-developed by the IUCN, can measure the effectiveness of specific actions in particular locations on slowing global species extinctions.
Pic Courtesy: Down to Earth
Content Source: Down to Earth