Sounding the alarm on biodiversity loss

Norwich—Rising global temperatures are once again at the top of the world’s agenda. But why care about the increase in temperature, if not because of its impact on life on Earth, including human life?

That is an important question to consider, in view of the relative lack of attention devoted to a closely related and equally important threat to human survival: the startling pace of global biodiversity loss.

The availability of food, water, and energy—fundamental building blocks of every country’s security—depends on healthy, robust, and diverse ecosystems, and on the life that inhabits them. But, as a result of human activities, planetary biodiversity is now declining faster than at any point in history. Many policymakers, however, have yet to recognize that biodiversity loss is just as serious a threat as rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

This lack of sufficient attention comes despite international commitments to protect biodiversity. In October 2010, global leaders met in Aichi, Japan, where they produced the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which included 20 ambitious targets—such as halving global habitat loss and ending overfishing—that signatories agreed to meet by 2020. Safeguarding biodiversity is also specifically included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yet progress toward these global biodiversity goals is likely to fall dangerously short of what is needed to ensure an acceptable future for all.

Policymakers have largely agreed on the importance of holding the rise in global temperature to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels—the goal of the Paris climate agreement. But too few leaders have shown any sense of urgency about stemming biodiversity losses. The sustainable future we want depends on ending this indifference.

Toward that end, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ipbes), which I chair, will release a series of landmark reports next March on the implications of biodiversity decline. Prepared over three years by more than 550 experts from some 100 countries, these assessments will cover four world regions: the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe and Central Asia. A fifth report will address the state of land degradation and restoration at regional and global levels.

The reports will highlight trends and plausible futures, outlining the best policy options available to slow the degradation of ecosystems, from coral reefs to rainforests. Taken together, the assessments will represent the global scientific community’s consensus view on the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Moreover, the reports will highlight the close links between biodiversity loss and climate change, which should be addressed simultaneously. The world will not be able to meet the goals of the Paris agreement— or many of the SDGs, for that matter—unless it takes into account the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Today, most governments separate their environmental authorities from those focusing on energy, agriculture, and planning. This makes it difficult to address climate change or biodiversity losses in a holistic way. New types of innovative governance structures are needed to bridge these policy silos.

After the release of Ipbes regional reports next year, a global assessment building on them will be published in 2019. This will be the first global overview of biodiversity and ecosystem services since the authoritative Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005. It will examine the health of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, and the impact of factors including acidification, rising sea surface temperatures, trade, invasive species, overfishing, pollution, and land use changes.

If the full consequences of climate change are to be addressed in our lifetime, we must recognize that human activity is doing more than just adding a few degrees of temperature to the annual forecast. By March, we will have the data on biodiversity and ecosystem services to prove it, and the policy options to change course.

———— Robert Watson is strategic director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia.