Implications of COVID-19 on progress in the UN Conventions on biodiversity and climate change

Abstract

2020 was to be a landmark year for setting targets to stop biodiversity loss and prevent dangerous climate change. However, COVID-19 has caused delays to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the 26 th COP of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Negotiations on the Global Biodiversity Framework and the second submission of Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement were due to take place at these COPs. There is uncertainty as to how the COVID-19 disruption will affect the negotiations, whether parties will pursue more ambitious actions or take a weaker stance on issues. Our policy analysis shows there are broad opportunities for climate and biodiversity frameworks to better respond to COVID-19, by viewing future pandemics, biodiversity loss,

COVID-19, deforestation, and green economy

“…This situation provides an opportunity to steer COVID-19 stimulus packages toward nature-based solutions for transition to a green economy, which will not only help in socioeconomic recovery but also in building community resilience to cope with livelihood crisis, particularly for rural communities that depend on nature and land use for their survival. Nonetheless, the recovery spending could provide a unique opportunity to change this: If recovery packages would focus on accelerating the transition toward low-carbon energy and improving energy efficiency, it could be a significant boost toward reaching the Paris Agreement targets and national climate policy goals (Ortiz et al, 2021). The present disruption due to the pandemic, in this way, may facilitate the shift toward sustainability, which is an ambitious goal to achieve as per the 2030 agenda.…”

Causal discovery in biodiversity-mediated social-ecological systems

“…Addressing climate change and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene requires us to recognize that human societies and ecological systems are inherently interconnected in complex adaptive systems, i.e., social-ecological systems (SES) (1-3). Understanding SES feedbacks is crucial in predicting the functioning of our Earth System and society (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10) and its responses to current global changes and challenges. Yet, research has mainly examined these processes by focusing on either ecological or social and institutional components, simplifying their interactions and longterm dynamics (11), and rarely inferring causality (12).…”

“…Causal analyses are conceptually and philosophically well-established from experimental data in many research fields (33)(34)(35), and some methods for causal analyses are specific for some data types (30)(31)(32). Thus while individual methods may have limited support for data integration and method transferability (5,6,36,37), the range of techniques (38) and the flexibility of many to deal with different data types and structures, make them a promising approach to derive new insights from interdisciplinary data (4,39,40) characteristic of SES.…”

“…(45)). Causal discovery, recently has experienced major developments in algorithms and applications to observational data, which are becoming more readily available and have the potential to link data from social and ecological domains as required for causal discovery in SES (5, 21, 36, 46). These “big literature” and "big data" methods have recently been applied to several disciplines related to SES: ecology (38, 47–49), climate science (50, 51) uncertainty analyses (52), and sustainability (53), where they enable the combination of data types and spatial and temporal processes through causal links, and derive predictions of system behavior.…”

Ensuring consideration of water quality in nexus approaches in the science–practice continuum: reply to discussion of “Water quality: the missing dimension of water in the water–energy–food nexus?”

“…Freshwater quality deterioration (in terms of chemical and bacteriological composition) has been attributed to the indirect impact of COVID-19 on human activities and consumption, such as increased domestic sewage outputs (Patel et al 2020), mass use (and discard) of single-use plastics and personal protective equipment (Patrício Silva et al 2021), and use of chlorine-based disinfectants (Chu et al 2021), although the reduction in industrial polluting activities improved water quality during lockdowns (Liu et al 2022). The drivers of pandemics are regarded to be the same as those that underlie climate change and biodiversity loss -land-use change, agricultural extension and intensification, and human consumption (Ortiz et al 2021)and which by extension also give rise to WEF nexus tensions. During the UNFCCC COP 26 meeting, increased prominence was given to the role of indigenous peoples and local communities and to nature-based solutions in climate adaptation and mitigation (UNFCCC 2021).…”