Environmental Negotiations Are Necessary at Nagoya

If we want to stop biodiversity loss, national delegates at the COP 10 meetings in Japan must link human security to environmental security.

The situation is critical, and the challenge is immense. One hundred and ninety-three national delegations are in Nagoya, Japan attending the 10th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-10). This will be the international community’s last and best chance to halt the march to extinction of many species. Every year, between 1,500 and 15,000 species disappear forever. This is one of the worst mass extinctions our planet has ever endured, and it is due primarily to human activity.

In the early 1990s, the international community came together with much fanfare and signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was designed to preserve 10 per cent of the world’s ecological regions by 2010. Sadly, no country is anywhere close to meeting this target. Human activity continues to destroy habitats, resulting in a massive decline in biodiversity. Twenty-five per cent of the world’s mammal species, 20 per cent of the world’s birds, and 40 per cent of the world’s amphibians are threatened with extinction. Ninety per cent of the world’s commercial fish species are over-exploited or have been depleted.

Many activists complain that governments are not providing the cash that is required to invest in environmental programs. They are right. However, during these times of ballooning deficits and fiscal austerity, environmental projects usually fall down the ladder of a government’s priorities. More resources are needed, yet they must come from another, under-utilized source – one that will protect critical habitats without putting new demands on over-stretched government finances.

In their natural state, biospheres can generate substantial revenues through programs that have low environmental impacts. Indeed, the best way to preserve habitats is to show that they have a greater value when they are protected than when they are cut down, bulldozed, polluted, or paved over. This lesson was learnt by a number of countries in Africa and Latin America. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the story of the white rhino, the world’s second-largest land mammal.

In the late 1800s, there were only 60 of these magnificent animals left on the planet, all huddled along the banks of the Umfolozi River in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The South African government at the time realized that the species would become extinct if they did not act quickly. First, they created the Imfolozi National Park to protect the habitat where this last population of white rhinos lived. They then used the park to generate revenues from eco- and ethno-tourism, selling the meat of culled animals at a low price to people in the surrounding areas, and creating employment. Proceeds from these initiatives were diverted back into the park for conservation purposes, but were also used to fund primary health care, education, and basic infrastructure. As a result, those who lived in the area saw that the reserve had a direct benefit to their lives and thus acted to protect the park.

This mechanism of generating funds from biospheres and providing benefits to rural populations is now being used in a number of countries, including Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Brazil. In each case, habitats have been protected, species have been rescued from the brink of extinction, and the lives of people in rural areas have improved.

Destroying wild spaces may offer short-term benefits, but it comes at a massive long-term cost. Habitat loss results not only in the annihilation of species that could have been used for medical and commercial purposes, but also increases the prevalence of diseases and decreases water quality. These biospheres are also carbon sinks, so their destruction exacerbates global warming, which negatively affects food security and weather patterns.

If world leaders in Nagoya merely emerge from the meetings with another protocol, then there is little hope that the extinction of so many species will be stopped. If, however, world leaders connect development initiatives with environmental projects that preserve and use wild spaces to generate sustainable revenues while providing direct benefits to those who live near the habitats, then biospheres will be saved.

Human security is contingent on environmental security. The health of our species is inexorably tied to the health of our planet. If we fail to implement solutions that support this natural equation, our survival will be threatened – as will that of the remarkable panoply of biodiversity that lives with us on our only home, planet Earth.