People at the center of biodiversity conservation - is Goal B of the GBF strong enough?
Sustainable Use Goal of the Global Biodiversity Framework, appears as the most weakly-conceived of the goals.
Sustainable use represents a powerful anchor and glue that delivers on all three goals of the Convention in a reinforcing manner. A sustainable use approach delivers on societal aspirations and conservation outcomes because it is people-centered and nature positive.
Sustainable Use is the topic of, goal B of the Global Biodiversity Framework, however it appears as the most weakly-conceived of the goals. Goal A and conventional conservation have had the greatest attention historically, and are still evident in the focus of countries and many organizations on “30x30” - 30 percent protected areas by 2030, and “nature positive” messaging that dominates the narrative. Goal C, with its Nagoya Protocol, is highly focused on the specialized domain of benefits from genetic resources.
Goal B in the first draft of the GBF is instrumentalized around ‘valuing, maintaining and enhancing’ nature’s contributions to people, while focusing on how sustainable use would be achieved, rather than its achievement per se. The proposed milestones reflect this, with one of them focused on actions accounting for these benefits and informing policy. Many in Africa feel that Goal B must be stronger and more focused on the outcome of sustainable use.
‘Use’ is specifically about the transfer of contributions from nature to people, both material and non-material. Intensification of use over the last 50 years in the ‘Great Acceleration’ has led to humanity exceeding nature’s capacity to supply these contributions, resulting in today’s rapid decline in nature. Exceeding nature’s capacity has two faces. The most evident one is the exponential growth of wealth in some economies, fueled by abundant but polluting energy use and tele-coupled value chains that have exhausted nature in some regions of the planet to supply demand in others.
The second face is also very evident – where local demand exceeds local carrying capacity of ecosystems, resulting in environmental degradation, growing poverty and eventually conflict and migration.
Goal B needs to address both these challenges, to bring use within sustainable bounds. Two approaches may address this, dealing with each of the two faces and building on elements already contained in targets 15 and 16 – one focused on economic production and consumption sectors, the other on sustainable use within more local contexts, and the interests and rights of Indigenous people and local communities, and vulnerable sectors of society. Critical to success is the equitable interactions between these, such that no-one is over-consuming or over-producing, and minimum needs are met for all.
For the first approach, bringing teleconnected and global production into sustainable limits may be done through ‘footprint’ approaches, such that the footprint of actors in varied production and consumption sectors are brought down so the global total falls within planetary limits. Many footprint approaches, and efforts to develop science-based targets for companies and cities, can help guide and quantify the activities and impact of companies and the public sector (e.g. cities) within national frameworks. One element of goal B should focus on bringing production and consumption levels in line with footprint limits, for example reducing them to a specified level by 2030, on the way to sustainable limits by 2050. A key focus is assuring that the most vulnerable are not harmed or deprived by the highest producers/consumers.
For the second approach, the focus could be that use levels of local resources are managed within sustainable limits, while also assuring that access to and benefits from these resources are equitablyshared. Management regimes that a chieve sustainability may be highly varied, depending on the type of resource, the local culture and governance regimes, as well as national governance. This element of the goal represents a long-term priority, but relatively neglected, component of the convention, assuring the rights to sustainable use of nature’s benefits by people across the globe.
These two faces of sustainable use need to be addressed under Goal B. Appropriate to the distinction between goals/milestones (as outcomes) and targets (as actions), they integrate combined effects of multiple target actions, such as of Targets 15 and 16 on production and consumption, supported through mainstreaming actions under Target 14, elimination of harmful subsidies in Target 18, production processes in managed ecosystem under Target 10 and equitable access to benefits in Target 9, among others.
By African CSOs Biodiversity Alliance (David Obura, Yemi Katerere, Simangele Msweli)
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