On Oct. 21, representatives of the world’s governments will gather in Cali, Colombia for two weeks of negotiations, side events and maybe some big announcements, too. They will meet as the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD). The announcements will hopefully propose both serious funding and tougher commitments to slow, and ultimately halt, the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems and the myriad forms of life that depend on it.
UNCBD was one of the three environmental agreements made at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, together with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These monumental treaties are vast, complicated and still evolving. The U.S. signed the climate agreement, but the country’s commitment has wavered over the years. Another withdrawal from the treaty threatens should former President Donald Trump win the Presidential election on Nov. 5. As for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the U.S. signed the treaty belatedly, in 1993, and the Senate never ratified it, leaving the country only an observer to the proceedings. Only three other countries have not ratified the convention: Andorra, Iraq and Somalia.
The treaties matter. They set ambition, articulate a vision and create legal obligations. They focus attention on problems that no country can solve alone; to realize the treaties’ ambition, every country must act and must act in concert. The most recent iteration of this joint action plan for biodiversity is the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which parties to the treaty adopted at COP15, held in Montreal two years ago. The framework includes four goals to realize by 2050 and 23 targets for 2030 (see here for details). In brief, the goals are to protect and restore ecosystems, species and genetic diversity; to “prosper with nature,” pointing to the importance of biodiversity for humanity to flourish; to share benefits fairly (acknowledging a long history of exploitation and neglect of traditional and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge); and to secure the investment needed to realize the ambition of the convention to secure the investment needed to realize the ambition of the convention.
For agriculture, hardly a single target is without relevance. Some that stand out include Target 7 on reducing pollution: “Reducing excess nutrients lost to the environment by at least half…; reducing the overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half including through integrated pest management…”; Target 10: “Ensure that areas under agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry are managed sustainably, in particular through the sustainable use of biodiversity, including through a substantial increase of the application of biodiversity friendly practices, such as sustainable intensification, agroecological and other innovative approaches…”; and Target 16 on sustainable consumption, which includes: “…by 2030, reduce the global footprint of consumption in an equitable manner, including through halving global food waste…”
The Biodiversity Convention matters, and the new framework is ambitious, which is great, even if the document has its limitations, too. The use of food security as if it were an objective in tension with biodiversity instead of dependent on biodiversity is one important instance of confused thinking (and tough political negotiations) in the document. Biodiversity loss hurts agriculture, while at the same time many agricultural practices threaten agriculture — especially industrialized mono-crop production and mass livestock operations but also the continuing expansion of agriculture into of forest and peatlands. A just transition to agroecological agriculture will protect biodiversity through reduced pollution and greater respect for the ecosystem services agriculture needs to thrive.
Important or not, the multilateral negotiations are hard and often inconclusive. As a U.S.-based organization, whose government is not a party to the convention, what does the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) hope to achieve by attending the COP for the first time in several decades?
We have three ambitions:
-
One: For many years, IATP has challenged false solutions to global environmental crises. These solutions are often bad for farmers and ineffectual — or worse, counterproductive — to their stated environmental ambitions. Our work on corporate net zero targets, for example, challenges agribusinesses to stop making claims they cannot meet and to get on with making real emissions cuts. One of the most serious problems, documented in the Land Gap report, is the amount of land corporations and national governments are proposing to use in their carbon capture initiatives (planting trees, for example): roughly one billion hectares, or approximately half the land currently now used for agricultural production. The proposals are for mono-crop plantations, of course, yet biodiverse forest ecosystems are not built in a week or a year but over centuries. The climate and biodiversity value of the plantations is far less than what is offered by the forests they replace.
We have also documented the problems with proposed financial tools such as carbon offsets. Offsets, now familiar in the UNFCCC context, are looking for uptake in biodiversity circles. This attempt to financialize biodiversity, by freezing natural resource use somewhere in the global South in exchange for continuing biodiversity-destroying practices somewhere else on the planet, is unjust and ineffective. Instead, we need programs that value natural resources as a form of wealth to protect and nurture, not least to protect food security and a country’s food sovereignty. We will be in Cali to learn what financial instruments are being promoted and to advocate for instruments that protect a just transition, rather than buying off continued pollution in food systems.
Two: We played a small part of an effort led by the University of Laval with the Government of Quebec, the UN FAO and CBD Secretariat to look at the Kunming Framework from the perspective of agriculture, to consider which agricultural policies need to change and how they can better support the framework targets and objectives. We want to see that work continue. It has already involved farmers from around the globe, many academics, local government officials, and some agricultural industry organizations, too. Many more voices could be brought in. The approach offers a basis for important discussions as rich countries rethink how best to invest agricultural subsidies and as all countries develop food system strategies. What part will agriculture play in the national biodiversity strategies now in development? Here is an opportunity to make that role central and a positive contribution to the CBD’s objectives.
Three: The meeting offers an extraordinary chance to meet allies both old and new, to learn what is happening around the globe, and to exchange with a huge range of people on what is most important for food systems and biodiversity now. As IATP prepares a new iteration of our agroecology program (see here for the existing work), we are excited to meet partners in Cali, to learn how we can support each other in creating national strategies that promote a just transition.
Ever since I took on the role of IATP Executive Director (four years ago almost to the day!), I have wanted to give biodiversity a larger role in our work. The biodiversity agenda invites a more complex and more nuanced conversation for food systems and agriculture than does a focus on climate change. The complexity of the needs of a specific place and balancing competing demands so as to protect multiple objectives simultaneously is quickly erased in a single-minded quest for reduced carbon emissions. It is not only biodiversity that suffers, but rural societies, too. Beyond that contrast, and perhaps even more fundamentally, agriculture, like biodiversity, is about nurturing life. Agriculture is the science and practice of converting sunlight into calories, to feed humanity. We must act urgently to slow and reverse climate change, but as we do so, we must also protect healthy soil microbiomes, pollinators, and the adaptive promise of genetically diverse plant and animal species.
We’re off to Cali to speak up for agroecology and its synergies with biodiversity and climate goals, and to learn a lot more along the way!
