Thirty years after the signing of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the picture is bleaker than ever, but many are still trying to combat the decline in biodiversity. The duty discussed the subject with the Executive Secretary of the Convention, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, and the Federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault.
We are not only suffering from the climate crisis, but also from the loss of biodiversity”, summarizes the To have to the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, while this UN treaty resulting from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 is celebrating its 30e anniversary.
The observation of this Tanzanian lawyer is also unequivocal: despite three decades of promises from the signatory countries – there are now 196 – the biodiversity crisis is worse than ever. “The most recent scientific data do not offer us a positive portrait. The situation is bad. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, due to the increase in pressures that cause this decline, ”insists the one who will be at the podium of the Council on International Relations of Montreal (CORIM) on Tuesday.
Species of mammals which are disappearing more and more rapidly, victims of poaching and the destruction of their natural habitats, populations of birds, amphibians, insects or fish in free fall and once rich ecosystems which are wiped off the map in the name of the spread of human activities… The lights are more red than ever, like the “red list” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which identifies endangered species and growing year after year.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema cites as an example the portrait painted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): no less than one million animal and plant species, out of the estimated eight million on Earth, are threatened with extinction, including “many in the coming decades”.
Biodiversity and climate
Human activity is directly involved in the declines observed around the world. Deforestation, intensive agriculture, overfishing, rampant urbanization, poaching, exploitation of non-renewable natural resources: 75% of the terrestrial environment has been “seriously altered” by human activities and 66% of the marine environment is also affected, according to the ‘IPBES.
The situation is such that the Canadian Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, believes that the observations on the severity of the climate crisis are valid to describe the biodiversity crisis. In interview at To have tohe also stresses the need to tackle both crises at the same time, especially because the protection of natural ecosystems, such as forests, is considered “a nature-based solution” to combat global warming.
“For too long, these issues have been tackled in silos. But I think one of the great merits of the UK Presidency of the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in 2021 is breaking down those silos and ensuring that now, when working on protecting biodiversity, we are also working on the fight against climate change and the fight against desertification”, he argues.
The two crises are all the more linked as the decline in biodiversity, which undermines the very foundations of life on Earth, is expected to worsen due to the impacts of climate change. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that more than 90% of the planet’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearing if global warming reaches 1.5°C, which could happen well before 2040. However, these reefs contain more than 30% of the planet’s marine species.
“High Ambition”
The Trudeau government, which is part of the “High Ambition Coalition” for nature, along with nearly a hundred other countries, further hopes that the United Nations Biodiversity Conference scheduled for later this year will be the opportunity to enhance international goals. Minister Guilbeault says he hopes that several states will commit, like Canada, to protecting 30% of their natural land and marine environments by 2030. he.
As far as the protection of marine environments is concerned, the task promises to be difficult, recognizes Steven Guilbeault, since barely 7% of these ecosystems are today protected on a planetary scale. “We are starting from afar, there is a lot of work to do. But when we see how quickly projects are emerging, for example in Canada, we see that it is possible. »
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema also hopes that the negotiations in the coming months will make it possible to better protect ecosystems, but also to envisage the restoration of natural environments degraded by decades of “unsustainable” human activities.
Even if it cannot comment on the case of specific countries, it considers it essential to curb the degradation that is affecting several regions of the planet, including areas of very high biodiversity. “For all the forests in the world, we need to commit to a strategy that combines protected areas with more effective policies to combat deforestation activities,” she stresses.
In fact, this desire sometimes clashes with the policies of certain governments. Since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in Brazil, for example, the destruction of the irreplaceable Amazon rainforest has accelerated. Only in April, according to official data, not less than 1000 km2 were shaved. And during the period 2020-2021, the Brazilian Amazon (60% of the largest tropical forest on the planet) lost 13,235 km2.
“There are also exemplary countries, such as Gabon or Costa Rica, where the vast majority of the forest is protected. There are therefore countries that have succeeded in creating sustainable models for communities, jobs and the environment,” welcomes Minister Steven Guilbeault.