Following COP27’s efforts to address climate change issues comes a conference focused on another grave global threat: biodiversity loss.  COP15 — the U.N.’s biodiversity conference taking place Dec. 7-19 in Montreal — is examining how nations can respond to the increasing rate of species loss. Today, 1 million species are threatened with extinction, which places our ecosystems, food production, economic systems, and health at risk.

Participants at COP27 stressed the importance of acting on biodiversity loss and urged world leaders to solidify an ambitious biodiversity agreement at COP15 — reinforcing that the climate and biodiversity crises are deeply linked. At COP15, international governments are expected to heed that call by establishing a Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, which will address key drivers of biodiversity loss, including human influence and climate change.

As detailed in the proposed framework, many opportunities exist for actions that would help to both restore biodiversity and lessen future climate change — a topic that was explored during a Climate Conversations webinar moderated by Conservation International’s leading climate change expert Shyla Raghav that highlighted findings from a recent National Academies report, Biodiversity at Risk.   

Kamal Bawa, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and founder and president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, emphasized the importance of solving these twin crises simultaneously.

“Nature-based solutions are based on that particular component of land-forest-agriculture and how we can use various strategies to sequester more carbon,” said Bawa, who served on the committee that wrote the National Academies’ report. “Nature-based solutions, I think, are solutions that bring together climate change and biodiversity and that has been one of the positive developments in recent years.”

Fellow webinar participant Victoria Reyes-García, an ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, stressed that not all nature-based solutions are equal, however. Some strategies may be effective for renewable energy but harmful for biodiversity, a challenge also noted in the National Academies report.

“When we are designing this nature resolution or designing all these policies, we should not be looking at only one aspect; we should be looking at how that option impacts biodiversity, climate, and also society,” Reyes-Garcia said. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Moreover, effective global solutions cannot be accomplished through nature- and technology-based solutions alone, she added.

“One of the main points that’s made in this report is that we can do a lot with nature, but nature alone is not going to solve the climate crisis,” Reyes-Garcia said.  “There is a need to change policies, to change the way we relate to nature, the way we consume, the way we behave, because we cannot only put all these on the shoulders of nature and technology.”

Solutions range from individual to global

The proposed COP15 framework sets ambitious targets because of the urgency and importance of the problem. However, as the report notes, change is not easy and takes coordination at local, national, and international levels.

According to Bawa, international cooperation will be most successful if it emphasizes engaging people from developing countries and Indigenous communities when developing global strategies.

“Recently, we have seen bringing more and more perspectives from developing countries into the global agreements and conventions than has been the case in the past,” Bawa said.   

According to the report, establishing well-designed laws and regulations at the national level that protect environmental areas and establish disease-protection practices in trade and travel and engaging the private sector are crucial for reversing biodiversity loss. But individuals also have a role in solving these crises. The actions individuals take at the store, in their homes, and in civic life can have great impact on the health and well-being of surrounding communities and ecosystems.

Reyes-Garcia noted that people can also start small by reconnecting with nature.

“Just start a garden or go for a walk in the forest,” Reyes-Garcia said. “Because only when we are emotionally connected to nature and we actually value beyond the monetary value or the benefit material that we can get, we will understand that there is a treasure there in nature for us to save.”

COP27 and COP15 have brought more global attention to acting on biodiversity loss and climate change this year than in years prior, and the decisions made this week at COP15 will determine global action on biodiversity loss for the next decade.

“We are all a part of nature — of this thin layer of life that surrounds the planet — and a part of how fragile it is,” Bawa said. “It is important to our survival, and we must understand what the pressures are on this fabric of life and how to mitigate these pressures. The book has messages for the government and, of course, individuals and what we can do on the matter.”

Related Resources

• U.N. Biodiversity Conference (COP15) 

• Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework 

• Climate Conversations webinar on biodiversity