May 22 is the International Biodiversity Day, a day established by the United Nations to raise public awareness of the increasing loss of biodiversity and the problems associated with it. The slogan for the celebration of Biodiversity Day 2021 is "We're part of the solution #ForNature", and we would like to share our thoughts on biodiversity by summarizing the Pick Up articles on biodiversity that we have covered so far.

About the Convention on Biological Diversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity  (CBD) was adopted in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Ten years later, in 2002, at the 6th Conference of the Parties (COP6), the strategic plan for parties to significantly reduce the current rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010 was adopted, but not all of the targets set in the plan were achieved. In response, a new strategic plan was adopted at the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) held in 2010 to implement effective and urgent actions to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020, with the aim of realizing a "world in harmony with nature" by 2050. The 20 Aichi BiodiversityTargets have been set as individual targets within this framework (1).

Current Status

According to the 5th edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook published in September 2020, among the 20 Aichi BiodiversityTargets, 6 targets have been partially achieved, but none have been fully achieved. In the assessment of progress using 60 specific elements of the 20 targets, 7 elements  (11.7%) have been achieved, 38 elements (63.3%) have shown progress, and 15 elements (25.0%) have shown no progress, move way from the target, or unknown progress (2). The year 2020 is the final year of the 2011-2020 UN Decade of Biodiversity as well as the 10-year Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, and also marks the 10 years remaining to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has also sounded the alarm about the decline of biodiversity in its Living Planet Report 2020: Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss. Based on the Living Planet Index (LPI), an index that measures the abundance of species populations around the world, the vertebrate population size declined by 68% between 1970 and 2016. By region, the 94% decline in Latin America and the Caribbean was the worst among the observed regions, while other regions showed declines of 65% in Africa, 45% in Asia Pacific, 33% in North America, and 24% in Europe and Central Asia (3). Human activities such as unregulated mining and infrastructure development and unsustainable agriculture and deforestation are the main causes of biodiversity loss (4), and as long as this trend continues, it could lead to the collapse of human society, including the collapse of food and health systems.

Future Actions

Addressing the loss of biodiversity requires urgent action and calls for an integrated approach that combines enhanced environmental conservation with sustainable production and consumption measures to recover from biodiversity loss. On January 11, 2021, the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity was held to accelerate international action to protect biodiversity with discussions focusing on four themes: protection of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, promotion of agroecology, mobilization of funding for biodiversity, and the link between deforestation, species and human health (5). The World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2021 Global Risks Report also ranked biodiversity loss as the fourth most important global problem (1: infectious diseases, 2: climate action failure, 3: weapons of mass destruction, 5: natural resource crises) (6).

This year is the start of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration will also be announced on June 5. In the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the post-attainment targets for the next decade are scheduled to be adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to be held in Kunming, China in October this year (postponed from October last year due to COVID-19). In order to achieve the 2050 Vision of “Coexistence with Nature”, it is necessary to coordinate actions in various fields, such as the expansion of efforts to conserve and restore biodiversity, measures to combat climate change, responses to the causes of biodiversity loss, changes in production and consumption patterns, and sustainable trade in goods and services.

References
(1) Aichi Targets. https://www.cbd.int/aichi-targets/
(2) Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO). https://www.cbd.int/gbo5
(3) Living Planet Report 2020.
https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1371/files/original/EN…
(4) IPBES (2019) Summary for Policymakers – Global Assessment Report.
https://ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment
(5) One Planet Summit https://www.oneplanetsummit.fr/en
(6) World Economic Forum. The Global Risks Report 2021.
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021

Contributor: KANAMORI Norihito (Information and Public Relations Office)