Today is International Biodiversity Day, the first since the landmark UN Global Biodiversity Framework was agreed in December outlining a new global plan of action for addressing the biodiversity crisis.
But how does biodiversity ‘fit’ with the other environmental issues we face? Is it ‘the other side of the coin’ to climate? How does it differ from ‘nature’?
Environmental issues are often perceived as a succession of challenges. A few decades back the focus was on acid rain. Then it was the ozone layer. Then it was climate. Today it is biodiversity. Deforestation and water crises also jostle for attention, not to mention the swathes of social challenges complicating the picture.
This can give an impression of a never-ending series of waves. In response, each issue is tackled individually, akin to a giant game of ‘Whack-a-Mole’. Address one issue over here and another pops up over there. Many companies even have separate teams dealing with each issue, often with competing budgets. As data and media attention fluctuate over time, so does engagement with the issue. The result is inefficiency at best, counterproductivity at worst. Progress is limited. Responders become jaded. This is not the way we should understand the challenges we face. We need to step back and understand the over-arching environmental challenge and its multiple facets.
Our environmental challenge is a problem of supply and demand.
Our environment is a machine of astonishing productivity, converting energy from the sun into everything humans, and ten million other species, require to survive. Our environmental challenge is that human activities are demanding more than the environment can provide whilst reducing its capacity to supply. The result is unlikely to be the end of the world, but it is very likely to be the end of a world that is currently providing ideal conditions for us to prosper.
On the demand side, we consistently use natural resources faster than they are regenerated. Think of over-fishing, freshwater abstraction or exhausted soils. We also demand our environment dispose of our waste faster than it can process it or create new waste substances that cannot be processed at all. Think of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fertilizer pollution, or plastics. The fact we have achieved this is quite impressive – our environmental machine has an astonishing capacity to provide us with resources and to mop up our waste. Natural ecosystems, for example, are a net sink for about 25 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. The problem is that human activity now releases over 50 gigatonnes.
At the same time, we exacerbate the situation by reducing the supply side, degrading, or destroying the natural systems that provide these services. We replace forests that provide multiple services with monocultures that provide just a few. We destroy vast areas of carbon-absorbing, fish-producing marine habitats for short term fishing or minerals gains. According to the IPCC, three quarters of our terrestrial ecosystems and two thirds of our marine ecosystems are now damaged or destroyed.
The result is an imbalance. The Global Footprint Network estimates we exceeded planetary capacity around fifty years ago. Now we are using the equivalent of 1.75 Earths every year.
The role of biodiversity
‘Biodiversity’ - refers to the level of variation of life. Variation tends to be a good thing. In general, the higher the biodiversity, the more productive, resilient and adaptable the system. A biodiverse rainforest, for example, will generate many services for many people (carbon sequestration, rainfall regulation, flood mitigation, fuel, fibre and medicines) and will tend to respond better to changes, such as changing climates or new disease. A low diversity plantation may generate one or two services very well (the crops, maybe some carbon sequestration) but will not provide the range of services the biodiverse forest does. It will also be dependent on fertiliser and pesticides to survive and will not respond well to change.
Biodiversity loss therefore means much more than the loss of individual, high-profile species. It means a loss in environmental ‘quality’ – an essential part of the supply side of the challenge. IPBES estimates one million species are now threatened by extinction, a figure put into context by the fact only 1.2 million plant and animal species have been described of an estimated 8-10 million species in total. We are gutting the environment of the ammunition it needs to support our very existence.
Sometimes ‘biodiversity’ is used interchangeably with the broader term of ‘nature’. Nature generally refers to a broader picture of the living world, including all natural systems, the diversity of life within them and the goods and services they generate. ‘Nature-related’ impacts include forest loss and degradation, water abstraction and pollution and impacts on the species within natural systems.
Climate change is a symptom, but it is not the disease.
To many, climate change is the environmental issue. But we need to stop thinking of climate as the only, or even the main environmental issue. Climate change is a symptom of the deeper malaise. It is the result of emitting more GHGs than the environment can process and the reduction of the capacity of the natural systems that process them. We happen to understand this particular symptom well, it is arguably one of the most urgent symptoms to address and is probably the one we are furthest in mobilising action; but it is still a symptom, not the root problem. Solving only for climate might give temporary relief, but it will not cure the disease.
Beyond climate and into nature
Whilst climate remains the dominant environmental issue of the moment, a shift in emphasis ‘beyond climate’ and the embracing of ‘nature’ is now underway. It is now widely recognised that climate goals cannot be achieved without action on nature – the role of oceans, forests, peatlands and the biodiversity within them in the emissions and uptake of carbon are just too large to ignore. At the same time, it is widely recognised that climate change is increasingly becoming a driver of nature losses, creating dangerous feedback loops that accelerate change.
But it is also being recognised that nature is far more than just a piece of the climate puzzle – that carbon cycle regulation is just one of tens of thousands of services a healthy environment provides for people.
Today we are finally talking about the need to address climate change and nature losses. Ecologists may argue this remains a false dichotomy, but it is an improvement, nonetheless. We have twin global processes in the form of the UNFCCC and CBD that are increasingly referring to one another. Companies that have focused solely on their relationship with climate are now adding wider nature-related risks and opportunities to their business planning such as water impacts, deforestation and biodiversity.
Tomorrow we really need to be talking about one environmental challenge. Ideally, the global environmental treaties need to combine into a single, coordinated response. And we need to move from thinking about climate and nature to a holistic understanding of where all our environmental demands exceed capacity and where all our environmental supplies can be boosted.
In the next blog we will be looking at some of the frameworks, standards and platforms available to companies to start thinking about, and addressing, their environmental impacts and dependencies beyond climate and how CDP fits into this eco-system.