A Super Year for Nature, and the Policy Stakes Could Not Be Higher

This year starts the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. It also sees meetings of two of the three Conventions arising from the Rio Earth Summit almost three decades ago, making it a ‘Super Year for Nature’¹. Although the Conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification have different individual aims, they share common goals around protecting the environment and the unique ecosystems which make up this planet.

Climate change, loss of biodiversity and increasing desertification are inevitable results of the ways of life many of us have enjoyed for a generation or two and which are increasingly being aspired to around the world. It is progressively harder to ignore that a fossil-fueled, resource-hungry global economy is not a realistic future scenario — it is literally consuming the Earth and its diversity of life.

Despite any appearances to the contrary, for most of us in Australia the interrelation of climate change, loss of biodiversity and increasing desertification is now obvious and accepted. A reputable national survey last year showed that only one in ten Australians denied that climate change was occurring. More than three in four Australians were concerned about climate change driving bushfire, drought, reducing food supply, destroying our reefs, creating weather, raising the sea level, and causing mass extinctions.

But, as in so many countries, our institutions have not to date given effective expression to this collective concern, casting this as a matter of individual choice, despite the results being experienced by all. Policy change has been far too slow, and without policy leadership business responses, where these are credible, are likely to lead to further disruptive transitions, impacting the most vulnerable and further eviscerating social cohesion that might foster a civil society capable of addressing our common future.

This super year for nature gives some hope that coordinated national and international policy leadership may be possible. In the lead up to CoP 26 in Glasgow in November, global focus on responding to climate change has sharpened (as our Australian Prime Minster is experiencing), and now countries are expected to agree on a Post-2020 Global Framework for Biodiversity and new targets for protecting biodiversity at October’s UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China. Business is expected to play a new and expanded role in implementing key outcomes on biodiversity, as has been the case with climate change.

In my work on the ground, building capacity to respond to the risks of climate change and to forge a more sustainable future, I see slow but growing recognition of the importance of our relationship with nature in policy and practice. In the face of the economic and social consequences of fire, drought, and ecosystems collapse, some of our most recent policy frameworks are acknowledging that the environmentally attuned values and culture of First Nations people can build resilience. Policy makers are very slowly adopting a social-ecological systems approach and are little by little acknowledging the fundamental importance of biological diversity. These are still by no means the policy mainstream, but there is vocal support from some parts of the business community, notably the finance sector, as sustainability risks are being internalised. This chorus echoes themes long-championed by local governments and their affiliations, as well as the enduring efforts of the not-for-profit community.

Global progress on biodiversity would give excellent momentum to the UN Climate Change Conference. Success in both these areas will hopefully provide some impetus for action on desertification and so for action on food and water security. Only if substantial and coordinated action in all these three areas can be achieved will we have some chance of achieving the ambitious targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

¹The CoP of the least well-known of the three Conventions, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, was also to have been held this year but has been postponed due to Covid.

Photo: Kaique Andrades on Pexels

About the Author:

Fabian Sack, PhD, SEP
Director, Sustainably Pty Ltd
ISSP Governing Board

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