Post-2020 biodiversity targets need to embrace climate change

Abstract

Recent assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have highlighted the risks to humanity arising from the unsustainable use of natural resources. Thus far, land, freshwater, and ocean exploitation have been the chief causes of biodiversity loss. Climate change is projected to be a rapidly increasing additional driver for biodiversity loss. Since climate change and biodiversity loss impact human societies everywhere, bold solutions are required that integrate environmental and societal objectives. As yet, most existing international biodiversity targets have overlooked climate change impacts. At the same time, climate change mitigation measures themselves may harm biodiversity directly. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 framework offers the important opportunity to address the interactions between climate change and biodiversity and revise biodiversity targets accordingly by better aligning these with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. We identify the considerable number of existing and proposed post-2020 biodiversity targets that risk being severely compromised due to climate change, even if other barriers to their achievement were removed. Our analysis suggests that the next set of biodiversity targets explicitly addresses climate change-related risks since many aspirational goals will not be feasible under even lower-end projections of future warming. Adopting more flexible and dynamic approaches to conservation, rather than static goals, would allow us to respond flexibly to changes in habitats, genetic resources, species composition, and ecosystem functioning and leverage biodiversity’s capacity to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Maximizing the effectiveness of national commitments to protected area expansion for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem carbon under climate change

“…Leaders of both the United States and Canada have joined those of other nations in endorsing global calls to protect at least 30% of their respective nations (ECCC, 2020a; White House, 2021). However, translating such commitments into national and subnational policies that maximize the role of new protected areas in addressing both climate change and biodiversity loss is challenging (Arneth et al, 2020). Here we explore how expansion of the protected area network within Canada and the United States can more effectively address climate‐change‐related threats to biodiversity by protecting climate refugia and areas with high levels of carbon stored within intact (i.e., high ecological integrity) ecosystems.…”

“…An approach that focuses on avoided conversion of natural areas at meaningful scales is especially important in landscapes such as peatlands and old forests that hold large quantities of ecosystem carbon that, if lost due to disturbance, would be irrecoverable within a timescale meaningful to addressing climate change (Beaulne et al, 2021; Goldstein et al, 2020; Law et al, 2018). The large amount of land required, the convergence of biodiversity and climate change agendas (Roberts et al, 2020), and feedbacks between biodiversity loss and climate change (Arneth et al, 2020) should compel planners to seek to holistically align objectives for new protected areas that maximize co‐benefits (Díaz et al, 2020).…”

“…Leaders of both the United States and Canada have joined those of other nations in endorsing global calls to protect at least 30% of their respective nations (ECCC, 2020a;White House, 2021). However, translating such commitments into national and subnational policies that maximize the role of new protected areas in addressing both climate change and biodiversity loss is challenging (Arneth et al, 2020).…”

Tetrapod diversity facets in jeopardy during the Anthropocene

“…There are continuous evidences of ongoing global decline for all these species [28][29][30][31][32] , to the point that approximately one third of them are threatened with extinctions, spanning from 14% of birds to 40% of amphibians 33 . Tetrapods have important ecological roles within natural ecosystems 34,35 , thus preserving higher tetrapod diversity should buffer the effects of accelerated global change 36,37 , promoting ecosystem stability 38 . Many studies tried to disentangle tetrapod spatial patterns mainly focusing on mammals and birds 21,35,39,40 , but see 19,41 ), and their taxonomic patterns [42][43][44] , whereas little attention have been paid to the spatial patterns of the other diversity facets (i.e.…”

Plant-animal interactions in the era of environmental DNA (eDNA) – a review

“…Biodiversity arguably plays a prominent role in ecosystem stability (McNeely et al 1990). However, rampant exploitation of natural resources have increased extinction rates (Myers 1990, Arneth et al, 2020, and altered land-use patterns (Daily, 1995), which would adversely affect ecosystem functioning (Arneth et al, 2020). According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than one million species are at risk of becoming threatened with extinction (IPBES, 2019), heralding the Anthropocene as the sixth mass extinction (Myers, 1990;Román-Palacios & Wiens, 2020).…”