The world hasn’t fully met any of the 20 biodiversity targets set by global governments a decade ago, leading conservationists to condemn nature protection efforts as a “massive failure”.
A United Nations today reveals only six of the “Aichi targets” for 2020 have been partially achieved. The other 14, such as eliminating subsidies that are driving biodiversity loss or halving the rate at which natural habitats are being lost, have been completely missed.
The goals were agreed by almost 200 governments at a 2010 UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan. They aimed to stem the destruction of species and habitats, which naturalist David Attenborough said this week was “deeply tragic”. But today’s analysis by the CBD shows countries have failed to address the structural problems driving nature’s destruction, such as economic growth causing forests to be converted to farmland.
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Richard Gregory at the RSPB, a UK-based wildlife group, says the number of missed targets means the report makes for grim reading. “This represents a massive, if not catastrophic, failure at all levels,” he says. Significantly, indicators on policies supporting biodiversity protection are positive, but those on the drivers of loss, such as land use change and the current state of biodiversity itself, mostly show worsening trends, Gregory adds.
Felicia Keesing at Bard College in New York says that despite the shortcomings, the analysis shows “global coordination can make a real difference in protecting biodiversity”.
The report makes clear the situation would have been even worse without conservation efforts. The number of bird and mammal extinctions would have been up to four times higher without action in the past decade, the authors estimate.
Tim Hirsch at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility in Copenhagen, Denmark, one of the report’s authors, admits the scorecard is a “big disappointment”, but says that doesn’t detract from progress. Bright spots include work on stopping invasive species, the growth in protected areas of land and ocean and the doubling of financing for biodiversity projects.
David Cooper at the CBD rejects the idea efforts have been a failure, but says there is only so much conservationists can do. “We can do things that are specific for biodiversity, like protected areas, but they’re being overwhelmed by the more society-wide, economy-wide pressures that have not changed enough.”
The analysis follows a warning that a million species face extinction and comes ahead of a postponed , China, in May 2021, where governments plan to hash out new biodiversity targets that conservationists hope will be more successful than those agreed in Nagoya. “If the covid-19 pandemic doesn’t motivate us to make the changes we need to make, I don’t know what will,” says Keesing.
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