Economics of the Biodiversity Convention

Biological diversity refers to the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and interactions. Biological diversity, or biodiversity for short, is being lost at an unprecedented rate. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species estimates that 25% of mammals, 41% of amphibians, 33% of reef building corals, and 13% of birds are threatened with extinction. These biodiversity benefits are being lost due to conversion of natural habitat, overharvesting, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. The loss of biodiversity is important because it provides many critical resources, services, and ecosystem functions, such as foods, medicines, clean air, and storm protection. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose a major risk to human societies and economic welfare. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was established in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio “Earth Summit”) and enacted in 1993. The international treaty aims to conserve biodiversity and ensure the sustainable use of the components of biodiversity and the equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. The CBD has near universal global participation with 196 parties signatory to the treaty. The non-legally binding commitments established in 2010 by the CBD are known as the Aichi Targets. They include the goal of conserving at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water habitats and 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Biodiversity continues to decline at an unprecedented rate and the world faces “biological annihilation” and a sixth mass extinction event. There are several underlying causes of the continuing loss of biodiversity that need to be addressed. First, the CBD Aichi Targets are not ambitious enough and should be extended to protect as much as 50% of the terrestrial realm for biodiversity. Second, it is difficult to place an economic value on the range of direct, indirect, and nonuse values of biodiversity. The failure to take into account the full economic value of biodiversity in prices, projects, and policy decisions means that biodiversity is often misused and overused. Third, biodiversity is a global public good and displays nonrival and nonexcludable characteristics. Because of this, it is difficult to raise sufficient funds for conservation and to channel these funds to cover local conservation costs. In particular, much of the world’s biodiversity is located in (mainly tropical) developing countries, and they do not have the incentive or the funds to spend the money to “save” enough biodiversity on behalf of the rest of the world. The funding for global biodiversity conservation is $4–$10 billion annually, whereas around $100 billion a year is needed to protect the Earth’s broad range of animal and plant species. This funding gap undermines CBD’s conservation efforts. Governments and international organizations have been unable to raise the investments needed to reverse the decline in biological populations and habitats on land and in oceans. There is an important role for private-sector involvement in the CBD to endorse efforts for more sustainable use of biodiversity and to contribute funds to finance conservation and habitat protection efforts.

National aichi biodiversity target 1-an assessment in India

The Aichi Biodiversity Targets are a set of twenty targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that were developed to prevent the loss of biological diversity in each participating country and measure the progress towards its conservation. Since India is a signatory to CBD, the country developed a set of twelve national targets in alignment with these twenty Aichi targets aimed to conserve biodiversity. The very first target of twelve Indian targets that were set to be achieved by 2020 was about making people aware of the values of biodiversity within ten years. This article outlines the Aichi National target one and the progress made by India towards the achievement of Aichi-12.

The International Biodiversity Agenda at the Local Level: the Case of Capybaras in Curitiba, Brazil

The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is a South American native rodent with an outstanding capacity to colonize urban environments. In Curitiba, a city worldwide known for its urban planning, the capybara adaptation comprises an interesting case to better understand the challenges in addressing Aichi targets at the local level. Specialized literature, official data and interviews indicate that this species is spreading throughout parks interconnected by rivers. This study illustrates an intricate relationship between capybaras and the urban socio-ecological environment, suggesting that the city only partially addresses Aichi targets. Local authorities are likely to face several challenges for adopting a global agenda on biodiversity. Producing robust knowledge on the urban biota is one fundamental step towards this goal.

The Species Awareness Index (SAI): a Wikipedia-derived conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness

Threats to global biodiversity are well-known, but slowing currents rates of biodiversity loss remains an ongoing challenge. The Aichi Targets set out 20 goals on which the international community should act to alleviate biodiversity decline, one of which (Target 1) aimed to raise public awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Whilst conventional indicators for Target 1 are of low spatial and temporal coverage, conservation culturomics has demonstrated how biodiversity awareness can be quantified at the global scale. Following the Living Planet Index methodology, here we introduced the Species Awareness Index (SAI), an index of changing species awareness on Wikipedia. We calculated this index at the page level for 41,197 IUCN species across 10 Wikipedia languages, incorporating over 2 billion views. Bootstrapped indices for the page level SAI show that overall awareness of biodiversity is marginally increasing, although there are differences among taxonomic classes and languages. Among taxonomic classes, overall awareness of reptiles is increasing fastest, and amphibians slowest. Among languages, overall species awareness for the Japanese Wikipedias is increasing fastest, and the Chinese and German Wikipedias slowest. Although awareness of species on Wikipedia as a whole is increasing, and is significantly higher in traded species, over the period 2016-2020 change in interest appears not to be strongly related to the trade of species or animal pollinators. As a data source for public biodiversity awareness Wikipedia could be integrated into the Biodiversity Engagement Indicator, thereby incorporating a more direct link to biodiversity itself.

Ecosystem-based metrics provide better targets than explicit extinction targets for biodiversity frameworks

The post-2020 global biodiversity framework has the potential to shape the future of life on Earth, so great care must be taken in deciding its aims. The failure of all but one of the Aichi Targets requires a rethinking of prior agreements [1], and conservationists are now exploring new types of targets that are more likely to succeed. One commonly-suggested potential metric is extinction, with the goal of avoiding some number or percent of species going extinct within a specific timeframe [2]. Whilst extinction seems like a logical and conducive metric for global conservation targets, and certainly be prevented, measuring the loss of high-quality representative habitat has often been used as a surrogate in global targets. Here, we argue that extinction is unsuitable as a metric for biodiversity frameworks: it fails to meet the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Aspirational, Realistic, Timebound) target criteria. That is, although extinction is undeniably important, it is not feasibly measurable, and does not provide realistic targets to control.

Global marine biodiversity in the context of achieving the Aichi Targets: ways forward and addressing data gaps

In 2010, the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed on the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. As this plan approaches its end, we discussed whether marine biodiversity and prediction studies were nearing the Aichi Targets during the 4th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity held in Montreal, Canada in June 2018. This article summarises the outcome of a five-day group discussion on how global marine biodiversity studies should be focused further to better understand the patterns of biodiversity. We discussed and reviewed seven fundamental biodiversity priorities related to nine Aichi Targets focusing on global biodiversity discovery and predictions to improve and enhance biodiversity data standards (quantity and quality), tools and techniques, spatial and temporal scale framing, and stewardship and dissemination. We discuss how identifying biodiversity knowledge gaps and promoting efforts have and will reduce such gaps, including via the use of new databases, tools and technology, and how these resources could be improved in the future. The group recognised significant progress toward Target 19 in relation to scientific knowledge, but negligible progress with regard to Targets 6 to 13 which aimed to safeguard and reduce human impacts on biodiversity.