COP15 | Don’t repeat past mistakes

Never has a COP on biodiversity aroused so much interest on the international scene. Montreal is hosting a record-breaking delegation from December 7 to 19, which will try to adopt a new global framework to better protect nature. To achieve this, countries will have to learn from the failures of the previous game plan.

More than 18,000 accredited people

More than 18,000 COP15 participants have been accredited by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, headquartered in Montreal. A record in the history of these international meetings which are held every two years. In 2018, COP14 welcomed nearly 6,900 people to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. A delegation of 14,800 people attended COP10 in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010. It was at this meeting that delegates adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the 20 Aichi Targets, in reference to the prefecture of the same name where the city of Nagoya is located. For Eddy Perez, director of climate diplomacy at the Climate Action Network, this significant participation in COP15 indicates “that there is a fairly high degree of interest and that there is a multitude of actors who were not not present in the past which was added”.

The Failures of the Aichi Targets

“None of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will be fully achieved”, has already acknowledged the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. “At the global level, none of the 20 goals has been fully achieved, although six of them are partly achieved (Goals 9, 11, 16, 17, 19 and 20)”, stated the report titled Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 published in 2020. In particular, it showed progress, but at insufficient levels overall to achieve the 20 goals. In 2020, on average, signatory countries reported achieving more than a third (34%) of their national targets. However, only 23% of the national targets were aligned with the Aichi targets.

Objectives that are too vague

A study published in 2019 in the journal Conservation Biology assessed the Aichi Targets and these, for the most part, scored low for their measurability and realism. A failure that is largely attributable to objectives worded in an “extremely vague” manner, explains Dominique Gravel, professor of biology at the University of Sherbrooke and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology. “The only quantified objective was that on protected areas and even its wording was highly contested”, he specifies. That said, the Aichi targets are a perfect illustration of the difficulties in concluding an international agreement that is as binding as possible, believes Eddy Perez. “In international law, the degree of constraint is in the details. If there are not enough of them, it is more likely to be interpreted differently from one country to another. »

Some good news though

All is not gloomy, however, on the biodiversity front. In its report published in 2020, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity mentions in particular that “nearly 100 countries have integrated the values ​​of biodiversity into national accounting systems”. It is also reported that “the rate of global deforestation has dropped by a third compared to the previous decade”. It is also estimated that without the conservation measures adopted in recent years, “the extinctions of species of birds and mammals would have been two to four times higher”. Furthermore, significant progress has been made in terms of protected areas, even if the official objective has not been achieved. Between 2000 and 2021, the proportion of protected areas globally has increased from 10% to 16.6% for terrestrial areas and from 3% to 7.7% for marine areas.

A delay to catch up

Whether it is a question of climate or biodiversity, one observation is nevertheless essential: the modest progress is insufficient to meet the increasingly urgent challenges. But in terms of biodiversity, there is also a significant gap to be made up, points out Eddy Perez, of the Climate Action Network. He compares this COP on biodiversity to that of Paris on climate, COP21, which resulted in a historic agreement. “We don’t have a global framework for biodiversity by the end of the decade. If we don’t adopt anything this year, it will go to 2025.” The first drafts of a possible agreement made public to date clearly indicate a desire not to repeat the mistakes of Aichi with vague objectives without the possibility of measuring the progress. “This time, some countries are coming with very demanding requests,” says Dominique Gravel, particularly in terms of deforestation, reduction of pesticides and chemical fertilizers “with extremely ambitious objectives”.