Dr. Arvind Kumar*
Biodiversity is vital to life on our planet. It is essentially the life support system for humanity. The biodiversity we see today is the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution, increasingly influenced by humans. Governments around the world recognized this at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 and established the Convention on Biological Diversity to protect and conserve biodiversity. But the situation has become direr. The continued loss of biodiversity is not only an environmental issue,it also risks undermining the achievement of most of the UN sustainable development goals. It is central to development, through food, water, and energy security. It has significant economic value, which should be recognized in national accounting systems.
In the recent past, the impact of the climate crisis has become clear — with rising temperatures, droughts, powerful storms, and floods causing harm to local communities and economies. People have progressively understood why we must cut carbon emissions but the global biodiversity crisis has failed to capture the same political attention and public concern.
Over half of global GDP is dependent on nature. More than 1 billion people rely on forests for their livelihoods. And land and the ocean absorb more than half of all carbon emissions. In addition to playing a critical role in providing food, fibre, water, energy, medicines, and other genetic materials, biodiversity is equally important in regulating climate, water quality, pollution, pollination, flooding, and storm surges.
However, since 1970, human activities have destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands, wetlands and other ecosystems and significantly altered 75% of the ice-free land surface. Most oceans are polluted with plastics, and over 85% of wetland area has been lost. This destruction of ecosystems has led to biodiversity decline faster than at any time in human history and to a million species (500,000 animals and plants and 500,000 insects) being threatened with extinction, says the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services although many are preventable if we improve our management of biodiversity.
The recent ‘Living Planet Report 2022’ by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) identified land and sea use change and overexploitation of resources as the key drivers of biodiversity loss across the globe, along with other causes including invasive species, pollution, and climate change. Freshwater biodiversity, according to a 2022 WWF factsheet, is declining faster than that in oceans or forests around the world. It also states that India has lost about one-third of its natural wetlands–which are home to migratory birds and large numbers of plants and fish species–to urbanization, agriculture and pollution over the past four decades.
India covers 2.4% of the world’s geographical area and accommodates 11.4% of the planet’s plants (about 48,000 species) and 7.5% of its animal population (about 96,000 species), as per government data from 2011. The threat of extinction, however, looms over the better part of the country’s rich biodiversity. The latest Red List by the IUCN of 2021 expressed that at least 97 mammals, 94 bird species, and 482 plant species in India are threatened with extinction The reasons for the loss of biological diversity are varied.
Over the years, the Government of India has undertaken several efforts to conserve endangered species, by mandating protected areas for wildlife and setting up centrally sponsored schemes such as Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats, Project Cheetah, Tiger and, Elephant for wildlife conservation and conservation programmes for wetlands and lakes, among others. However, by focusing on big predator species, aren’t we diverting our focus away from small endangered species? In December 2021, India’s environment ministry proposed a draft amendment to the Biological Diversity Act of 2002. The amendment, if ratified, will dilute the safety regulations and lead to the exploitation of biological resources for commercial purposes. Thus, are we giving danger an opportunity? This is despite the fact that when India was progressing towards biodiversity conservation; for instance in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released data announcing that India’s tiger population had more than doubled over 12 years to 2,967 in 2018.
Our strategies must not leave unnoticed the role of diverse stakeholders in conservation. To complement multi-stakeholder consultations, we must integrate updated scientific data and information on species and their habitats. The governments and international community should strengthen enabling frameworks, create incentives and benefit-sharing measures, promote pro-biodiversity initiatives and address the core drivers of biodiversity loss. We need to steer away from the limiting paradigm of economic growth that prioritizes GDP and have to recognize the social values of biodiversity and the social costs of environmental degradation. We also need to eliminate harmful agricultural, energy and transportation subsidies and incentivise sustainable production.
Climate change and biodiversity loss (as well as pollution) are part of an interlinked triple planetary crisis the world is facing today. They need to be tackled together if we are to advance the Sustainable Development Goals and secure a viable future on this planet. In December 2022, governments will meet in Montreal, Canada at CBD COP 14 to agree on the new framework, which presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity to secure an ambitious and transformative global plan to set humanity on a path to living in harmony with nature. This framework should work in synergy with the Paris Agreement on climate change and other multilateral agreements on forests, desertification and oceans.
The forthcoming 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), scheduled in November in Egypt, should move forward with addressing the “triple inequality” of responsibility, mitigation, and adaptation in a way that produces clear-cut commitments and binding agreements and should aim to have nations agree to a global biodiversity framework with internationally binding targets for biodiversity (akin to the 2˚C of the Paris Agreement for climate) providing a guiding light for all markets. It is important to reinvigorate multilateralism and avoid undermining each other’s efforts by establishing a network, striving towards policy coherence and continuous development. The need of the hour is for these two UN conventions to work together to achieve all relevant SDGs and targets through a comprehensive and holistic approach because we can’t work in isolation if we are to end the triple planetary crises.
*President, India Water Foundation
