Less than a month after the COP27 on the climate in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, the COP15 on biodiversity begins in Montreal. In the coming days, we will have the opportunity to be at the forefront of these international negotiations, the objective of which will be to define a global framework for the restoration of nature by 2030, not to mention the delay to catch up since the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol in 2010, none of whose objectives have been fully achieved on a global scale.
While the United Nations Climate Change Conference is attracting more attention, this 15e Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is equally important, especially as it is increasingly understood and established that these two crises are closely linked.
Although the inseparable links between the climate crisis and the erosion of biodiversity have been scientifically demonstrated, and we now seem to recognize the interconnection between the two from a political point of view, it appears that they are most of time considered separately, particularly at the economic level. It suffices to take the Government of Quebec’s Plan for a Green Economy as an example to see that the share invested in nature is very small—less than 6% of the total planned budget—while on a global scale, nearly a third efforts required to mitigate climate change and limit global temperature rise by 2030 will require nature-based solutions.
On the side of the climate crisis, more and more companies and governments are committing to carbon neutrality objectives and deploying concrete measures to achieve them. Carbon markets and taxes, subsidies for the electrification of transport, decarbonization measures for certain industries; the solutions are numerous and easily measurable when it comes to tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs). But the situation turns out to be eminently more complex when it comes to living things.
Indeed, nature has this particularity, due to its silent, invisible and mobile character, but also due to its local dimension, of being more difficult to grasp and measure.
Unlike GHG reduction targets, which can subscribe to the principle of additionality and be more easily coordinated at the international level, biodiversity involves a much higher level of complexity, and a finer scale of analysis.
But despite this observation, and given the magnitude of the situation, the percentages of protection of the territory by 2030 and the mechanisms for compensating for the loss of biodiversity will not be enough to meet the challenge we face. The Act respecting the conservation of wetlands and bodies of water in Quebec is a good example of this, when we know that currently, less than 3% of the funds raised since its entry into force in 2017 have been spent to finance projects for the restoration or creation of wet. This calls into question the very objective of “no net loss” of the law. We therefore have every interest in defining a coherent way, and its own, of being able to generate innovative investments in activities or assets favorable to biodiversity, means of creating wealth, in a dynamic of protection and not only compensation.
Biodiversity and prosperity
It is now clearly established that biodiversity is intimately linked to our prosperity, at all levels; our food, our health, our savings, all aspects of our lives are connected to it and depend on it. But despite everything, the erosion continues. In the most recent “Wild Species 2020” report, unveiled by Ottawa earlier this week, and which reports on biodiversity in Canada, we learned that one in five species is at risk of extinction in Canada. For its part, the CBD Secretariat pointed out that species are dying out about 1000 times faster than their natural rate, due to human action. So what are we waiting for to mobilize? Governments alone will not be able to fund the means to reverse the trend. The investments required are too great — in the order of more than 700 billion by 2030 — and the rate of destruction of nature, too rapid.
This is why it is essential to mobilize the private sector and the actors of sustainable finance, and to set up systems and create interesting frameworks to value biodiversity.
Internationally, reflection and implementation are already well underway at several levels, as evidenced by the UNDP BIOFIN Catalog of Financing Solutions, which presents dozens of mechanisms to finance the protection of biodiversity. In France, article 29 of the energy-climate law, which is based both on better integration of climate and biodiversity issues within investment policies, and on taking into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) in risk management, is a concrete example of a political mechanism aimed at supervising the implementation of means to contribute to the energy and ecological transition by financial players. In Australia, legislation is being introduced to support a biodiversity market, where credit will be given to conservation projects that can demonstrate measurable environmental improvements. Little by little, solutions are imagined and implemented. But time is running out. The erosion of life continues and accelerates.
If investors have been seizing this issue for several years now, and are gradually integrating the impact and dependence of their investments on environmental dimensions – including biodiversity – investing for the protection of nature must now become essential. However, to succeed in modifying these economic dynamics and making biodiversity a potential for creating value, we will need political will and an incentive, regulated and voluntary financial framework to encourage or even impose such investments.
Of course, several questions about the measurement and valuation of this type of investment remain, among other things because the benefits derived from nature are essentially collective and this represents a challenge of integration into the dominant economic models. So let’s take advantage of this COP15 to have a frank discussion on the economics of biodiversity, and collectively rethink our economic models in order to truly protect it.