Biodiversity

[Dona Ferentes]

Now that the Climate has been controlled, those restless 'powers-that-be' have a new challenge.

To help address the global biodiversity crisis, and understand the role human activity plays in causing it, an expert group from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) created the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in the early 1990s. The CBD is an international legal instrument tasked with the mission of protecting nature and creating policy change. Since inception 196 nations have ratified it.

As with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) , the parties to the treaty meet at regular intervals (a Conference of the Parties, or COP) to review progress and set targets.

The next meeting, at time of writing, is COP15 (part 2) in Montreal, which has been postponed three times as a result of Covid 19 and its associated lockdowns. COP15 was also split into two parts, with the first stage taking place in Kunming, China in October 2021, which resulted in 100 countries committing to supporting an ambitious and measurable post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBFiii).

The proposed framework includes 21 action-orientated targets for 2030, covering areas from expanding protected land to eliminating plastic pollution. This year’s long-awaited conference is particularly important because the details of the framework are set to be finalised and may become legally binding.

The CBD matters because it may well lead to a ‘Paris Agreement for nature’, in other words, a global deal that will ultimately enshrine the preservation of biodiversity and could radically disrupt sectors from agriculture to tourism.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

And from an investment manager looking to maintain virtue:

Three top takeaways​

1) Climate and biodiversity: two sides of the same coin

Biodiversity loss is inextricably linked with climate change. The climate crisis has risen heavily up political and economic agendas in recent years, but we cannot tackle climate change without fighting against the collapse of nature – and vice versa.

Restoring ecosystems, for example, is crucial to both. Research finds that restoring 30%viii of lands converted for farming would not only prevent over two thirds of predicted bird, mammal and amphibian extinctions, but it would put the world on track to sequester almost half of all carbon increases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution – more than 465 billion tons.

Unless we address the biodiversity and climate emergencies together, almost none of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – including eliminating hunger and poverty, reducing global inequalities and boosting access to clean water and affordable energy – can be achieved, leaving USD 7 trillionix at stake.

2) The food sector in the spotlight

Many sectors have a role to play in conserving and restoring nature, but the food sector is one of the largest global drivers of nature loss currently.

Agriculture threatens 86%x of the species at risk of extinction, according to the UN, as forests and other ecosystems tend to be cleared for crops or livestock. Our food system is both a leading contributor but also highly vulnerable to biodiversity loss: one third of food on our plate is at risk due to declining bee and butterfly populations, for example.

Just some of the ways the sector might change are likely to include a shift towards plant-based diets, a growth in food tech solutions (such as lab-grown meats), and more nature-friendly farming methods with less chemical inputs.

Source: Our World in Data


3) Reporting frameworks upping their game on biodiversity data

Information moves markets. And if investors are to invest in ways that better protect nature, they need better biodiversity data.

Just as the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has sought to standardise climate-related reporting, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFDxi ) aims to provide markets with a framework for disclosing and acting on nature-related risks threatening financial stability.

Since it launched in 2020, the TNFD has grown to include over 700 institutions across all sectors. The Taskforce, consisting of over 40 members representing USD 20 trillion in assets, spearheads efforts to collect wider and deeper market data on corporate biodiversity impacts. The framework due to be introduced in 2023 will be challenging to complete, and will no doubt evolve as metrics and methodologies develop, but it provides a starting point for considering nature in a structured way.

The TNFD aims to build on existing initiatives relevant to nature such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) and seeks to align with the CBD’s global biodiversity framework, particularly the goals of “no net loss by 2030 and no net gain by 2050”.

 

[Sean K]

I find it interesting that the number 1 takeaway for the UNEP is the inextricable link between biodiversity and climate change. But, their own statistics put climate change as the 7th largest contributor. Then, the four things they list as part of the climate change problem are debatable.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

And Charlie Darwin must be rolling in his grave.