Last week saw the announcement of the IPBES global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here People and Nature Associate Editor Peter Bridgewater (@Global_Garden0), gives us his insights and some reasons to be cheerful!
What the Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services means for PaN authors and readers
Unless you have been on extended fieldwork you will not have missed the extensive press coverage and social media tsunami over the release of the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
This, the first fully authorized global assessment released in 14 years, makes sobering reading. The Summary for Policy makers is available as an unedited version here.
But who is Hanrahan I hear you ask? He is a character featured in a poem by Australian Poet John O’Brien, who after drought, flooding rains, regreening of the landscape raising fire risks, is constantly gloomy. The poem repeats the phrase “We’ll all be rooned, said Hanrahan” on numerous occasions. Rooned, by the way, is Australian slang for ruined. And one has the feeling reading the Assessment Summary for Policy Makers that Hanrahan might have written a lot of it – as it certainly focuses on the real threats the natural world faces but downplays a little too much the bright spots and potential solutions.
Unsurprisingly, the major headlines, even in Science and Nature news sections focused on “1 million species to go extinct”. And the report makes that point, but it makes it with the appropriate caution expected in such assessments, and so less emphatically than headlines suggest. The result of the extinction focus (perhaps because of the popularity of the extinction rebellion civil society movement) means less attention has been given to other equally important – or perhaps even more important – areas of concern or hope. For example, the Assessment developed a range of policy scenarios that mostly showed negative trends in nature will continue to 2050 and beyond. However, those scenarios that included transformative change in the policy mix showed static or improving states of nature.
The result of the extinction focus (perhaps because of the popularity of the extinction rebellion civil society movement) means less attention has been given to other equally important – or perhaps even more important – areas of concern or hope.
Another example is that, in response to anthropogenic drivers, many organisms show ongoing biological evolution so rapid that it is detectable within only a few years on even more quickly – so management decisions that take those evolutionary changes into account will be more effective. At ecosystem level, novel communities, where species are co-occurring in historically unknown combinations, are already emerging and playing important roles in nature conservation.
A positive message of sorts is that much of the world’s terrestrial wild and domesticated biodiversity is to be found in areas traditionally managed, owned, used or occupied by indigenous peoples and local communities. Yet despite efforts at all levels, and while nature on indigenous lands is declining less rapidly than elsewhere, still biodiversity and associated cultural diversity (biocultural diversity) is deteriorating. This is a key are of interest for PaN, so manuscripts emphasising these links and relational thinking generally are more than welcome.
The Assessment emphasises that to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and achieve the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity, any future targets must consider the impacts of climate change. This raises the key issue of the links between climate change and biodiversity. Given the adverse impacts of climate change on biodiversity are projected to increase with increasing warming, ensuring any global temperature increase is well below 2 degrees Celsius (i.e. implement the Paris Agreement) would have multiple co-benefits for nature, nature’s contributions to people and quality of people’s lives. As always, however, there is a sting in the tail – some proposed mitigation measures to achieve the Paris agreement are projected to have significant impacts on biodiversity, as happened with the implementation of the Kyoto protocol. The use in the Assessment of nature’s contributions to people rather than ecosystem services is now de rigeur in IPBES – consideration of the value of this terminology is another area of interest for PaN contributions.
There are terrific stories to tell; from our urban jungles to Indigenous managed conservation areas. So, please, write them up and submit them, help bring back the Lorax, and put silly old Hanrahan in his rightful place!
That climate change and biodiversity change are inextricably linked has been clear for some time – yet governments and intergovernmental process act as though they were in separate silos. One positive feature to emerge is a joint piece of work scheduled for IPBES and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in the next year that will examine the positive and negative links between biodiversity and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
So, are there ways to translate this sobering set of messages and realities into actions? A continuing theme in the Assessment is the need for transformative change in government and civil society. Gandhi’s famous words that “we must be the change we want to see happen in the world” perfectly characterises transformative change. Transformative change is facilitated by innovative governance approaches, such as mainstreaming biodiversity across government sectors, to promote policy coherence.
Integrated governance across land and seascapes means not just legal frameworks, but a mix of policies and instruments combining to ensure positive results across nature conservation, ecological restoration, sustainable use of biodiversity, sustainable production, sustainable forest management and infrastructure planning. Where the Assessment deals with the role of protected areas, it points to the need for implementation of better management of nature beyond protected areas, as well as full and effective management of existing protected areas.
Oh yes – Truffula trees. Well, in 1971 (a year before the first of the mega-global UN meetings to solve “environmental crises”) Dr Seuss published his famous children’s book, The Lorax. The Lorax was an endangered species in a diminishing forest of Truffula trees. If you don’t know it, read it, and if you do know it, re-read it, as it is a perfect metaphor for where we are, and why we need hope more than despair.
So, dear potential authors for PaN, let’s see manuscripts which accentuate the positive focusing on how people, as part of nature, can help the rest of nature survive and, yes, flourish. And, if “accentuate the positive” sounds familiar, here is the extract from the Bing Crosby song:
“Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark
What did they do
Just when everything looked so dark
Man, they said we better, accentuate the positive”
There are terrific stories to tell; from our urban jungles to Indigenous managed conservation areas. So, please, write them up and submit them, help bring back the Lorax, and put silly old Hanrahan in his rightful place!
Relational Thinking 