By Alejandro Angulo
The conference on biological diversity or biodiversity, held in Canada, has already ended. At the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) on Climate Change no major agreements were reached. Still, it was recognized that none of the goals set previously had been met. In fact, the global decline in biodiversity has deepened.
The much-vaunted agreement to set the goal of conserving 30%—no longer 50%—of terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030 reveals the low expectations for the immediate future. It highlights the loss of effectiveness and reliability of international bodies and their mechanisms to change the current global biodiversity crisis, the complexity of building better agreements between parties, and the subjection of international organizations and their policies to global economic dynamics.
The commitment to million-dollar financing was greatly emphasized, but it remains to be seen if it is fulfilled. As has already happened with agreements for climate change, financing by the main countries responsible for emissions has not been achieved.
In my view, there is something very salvageable in sections of Goal 19:
c) Mobilize private finance, promote blending, implement strategies to raise new and additional resources, and encourage the private sector to invest in biodiversity, including through impact funds and other instruments.
d) Stimulate innovative systems, such as payment for ecosystem services, green bonds, compensation, credits for biological diversity, and benefit-sharing mechanisms with environmental and social safeguards.
I am most struck by subsection d) about payments for ecosystem services and compensation. This can be articulated from the international sphere, but above all in the daily tasks that are the responsibility of local governments. Here, decision-making is traced with respect to authorizations, permits, or licenses that transform, modify and/or degrade the biodiversity. The emphasis is on urban contexts, where changes occur with great speed and magnitude.
Said conceptualization is based on the co-responsibility that must be assumed by the actors in these transformative processes. It is also a previously explored starting point that is nothing but negative environmental externalities caused mainly by the development, growth and expansion of cities, where most of the population is already concentrated.
These two elements clearly contribute to societal efforts to contain the trajectory of collapse and other major challenges, such as climate change, the water crisis, the generation and invasion of plastics and microplastics, the degradation and loss of fertility of the soil, and food contamination.
Although it is not new, now the objectives are paired with a central theme, the health of the public. Diseases are on the increase, and greatly impact public finances and the pockets of the public. We are facing sickness despite technology and scientific advances. Undoubtedly, in the coming years, regulatory provisions, environmental taxes, international environmental tariffs, and environmental economic instruments, such as the impact funds mentioned in subsection c) will be necessary.
For many years, individual willpower hoped to change the environmental situation. However, today the madness called “ecocide,” which dominates at all levels, has swept away any goodwill. Therefore, society must be governed by norms and rules without distinction in order to emphasize the common good, and not only self-interest. Reversing or at least containing the current environmental disorder requires greater intervention from government agencies. The idea of «less government» must come to an end, as well as «the market solves everything,” if a collapse is not to happen.
Now is the time for public policies based on science, and not on occurrence or on the market. It is time to build and apply public policies for the benefit of all of society, and above all the environment. Public and private investment in environmental issues will no longer be seen as useless, exaggerated, unsuccessful spending or with little social impact. On the contrary, since what is at stake is the survival of the life itself. This investment is indispensable for economic development and social welfare.
Biodiversity is not something alien to humans. In fact, it is a part of human existence, benefiting all ecosystem goods and services, such as the removal of pollutants that affect our health, CO2 capture, and water filtration. It affects the unending Coronavirus pandemic, the food crisis, and food with few nutrients that causes sickness silently, like diabetes.
Biodiversity is made up of everyone and everything that exists on the planet. Without it, we are lost.
